Monsters Assemble: The Seventh Avenger
by morphepool129
Summary: When Earth is threatened with subjugation, it will take people who go beyond the line of duty and the limits of ordinary to take down this threat. OC Jake Hunter and the Avengers. Legends will be made, gods will be smashed, and monsters will roar.
1. Hatching a Plan

A Note from the Author:

I couldn't leave out Phase One guys, and once I can get Age of Ultron, I'll try to make a filtered version of Age of Monsters.

Enjoy, and if you like it, please review.

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" _ **The Tesseract has awakened."**_ _A voice that radiates the abyss of the universe speaks, his voice pushed by what little atmosphere the fragments of a long-gone planet can provide._

 _And the voice's possessor, a rather withered soul whose ashen body, concealed by a flowing silk cloak, and his mouth, imprisoned behind metal more precious than gold, denies not the enormity of his premeditated intentions that he wishes to share to his master._

 _A master who deems his underling undeserving of the grace of his face, and so, turns his throne, a cathedra sculpted out of riches unheard of by many, sold only by a few, so that he may look upon the universe with an insatiable lust for its conquering._

 _A universe that seems to draw itself closer to his hands, especially with the latest utterances. The Other has always brought nothing but good news to his ears, and so he does regard him with value, though little it may be._

 _And the Other is aware of this. He is grateful to his master for his life alone, and is willing to serve him, but the employ is one of great fragility, and he is always one to take care of every action, every word spoken, every position of each fiber in his body so that the master suddenly deems him disposable._

 _And so the Other recites his next words slowly,_

" _ **It is on a little world. A human world."**_

 _The being on the throne does not move, but in his mind, his thoughts race to a planet, freckled by soil, blanketed by air, and skinned by water. He does not utter its name, for those who live upon it are, in his eyes, not worthy of this space._

" _ **They would wield its power, but our ally knows its workings as they never will."**_

 _Wield its power? Perhaps their intergalactic value is not as exaggerated as he thought. These vermin were always at their most amusing the moment they fall onto their knees, begging for mercy, and why should they be given it when they always try to be more than what fate dictates. To try and attain positions only gods like him can ever hope to grasp._

" _ **He is ready to lead, and our force, our Chitauri, will follow."**_

 _He mentally scoffs. The Chitauri are a force so powerful very few in the universe dare speak their name. To hear them being used by a vagrant is almost something of an insult to his glory._

 _But he stays himself. The fruit of his ally's labor will be sweeter than an army of monumental infamy._

" _ **A world will be his."**_ _He may have said world, placate his craving for a kingdom of his own after the one that took him in ousted him after they denied him the very petition._

" _ **And the universe yours."**_ _No kingdom could be greater than the absoluteness of the cosmos, and no other beneath it will settle his own relishing._

" _ **And the humans,"**_ _the Other said as a last remark,_ _ **"What can they do but burn?"**_

 **Joint Dark Energy Research Facility. The Mojave Desert. Nighttime.**

This remote research institution is property of the Strategic Home Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division, otherwise known as S.H.I.E.L.D. as part of an enterprise involving a mysterious, extraterrestrial artifact known as the Tesseract. The studies conducted on this enigmatic object have yielded results far from the intended.

Then, one day, the building issued an evacuation. Soldiers make for the armored Humvees, trying to put as much distance as possible between the structure and themselves, guided by the suited federal agents. One in particular, bears on his profile the marks of a veteran in his field. He, of all the men in the area, is the most composed despite the ambience of panic as a helicopter makes its descent onto the landing pad. The wind generated by the blades barely buffets the man as he awaits its load.

This is Agent Phil Coulson. One of the best of S.H.I.E.L.D., he was someone who carried his duty with righteousness to see his assignments done.

This earns him the respect of the two people that exit the copter. First was a woman, her hair kept short for her line of duty, her body clothed in the female S.H.I.E.L.D. agent attire that gave viewers a good idea of her measurements. This was Maria Hill, Coulson's fellow agent and personal acquaintance. Her stare was icy, a habit that stems from her professionalism in the workplace, but deep down, she's held a strong admiration for the man in front of her. She wasn't also above complimenting his appearance. A black suit and tie felt right with him, though she would never show it on duty, much less in public.

The second person is a man with dark skin, wearing a black leather trench coat that covered his own work attire. His most distinguishing features are the eyepatch he wears to cover up a disfigured injury he would rather not talk about, not even alone, and the authority radiating from every point of his being. He is SHIELD's director, Nicholas Fury, a man whose lifetime experiences render him oblivious to nearly any form and manner of surprise sprung his way.

Assessing the situation around him, Nick realizes this was no time for friendly banter. He gets right to the point while his deputy watches from the side.

"How bad is it?" He asks of Coulson, but the latter gives a report far from helpful in this time of emergency.

"That is the problem sir. We don't know."

The walk to the radiation section of the floor was one of extremely tense silence that could crush a man's spirit. But this rigidity in the mood of things was not without reasonable cause.

Exactly four hours ago, Phil recounts, the Tesseract released an energy reading that was picked up by one of the lead scientists in the program: astrophysicist Dr. Erik Selvig. This was before NASA, who was aware of the experimenting done on the Tesseract, authorized real testing of any sort. It occurred even in his absence.

That led to only one very disturbing ruling to Agent Hill. "It just turned itself on?" Judging from the expression that had broken through on Agent Coulson's face when he had reported the event to them, she didn't need a verbal reply to be certain.

And then came worse news. The energy reading climbed, and continued to do so despite the many endeavors attempted to shut down the vestige. That was when the evacuation order was issued.

And Fury was not contented by how fast it was going. "Do better" he comments.

"Sir," Hill reasons, "Evacuation may be futile." She may be below him, but women often the see the reason in things sooner than men do.

He turns on her for a moment. "We should tell them to go back to sleep?"

She continues to cite her reason. "If we can't control the Tesseract's energy, then there might not be a minimum safe distance."

Fury ends the argument without a word, and moves his mind to matters he considers more pressing than the possibility of a doomsday event.

"I need you to make sure that Phase Two prototypes are shipped out."

Hill was unquestionably loyal to her director, but even she could see that he was only human. "Sir, is that really a priority right now."

This time, he doesn't even tilt his head. "Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on. Clear out the tech below. Every piece of Phase Two on a truck and gone." The tone of his voice made it evident to all those who heard it that he was making no room for further arguments.

"Yes sir." Hill says, hiding her defeat. She then addresses the standing agents to accompany her to the storage rooms while Coulson hastens the clearing of the campus up above.

The research's most precarious processes were carried out in a spacious chamber that was, as of present, bustling with activity at each end. All around man and machine monitored the Tesseract's activity with a notable delicacy that showed itself through the many beads of sweat trickling down the scientists' faces.

And in the center of the room, itself held in the middle of a compact muon solenoid coil chamber, was the Tesseract, a cube of energy that pulsed like seawater. At times, the object flared rings that generated shockwaves felt by everyone and threatened to break them of their tentative concentration as they sought ways for it to cease its unwanted emissions.

Fury calls for the man of the house, and Dr. Erik Selvig answers. He may be ages, with his hair graying, but his intelligence is as strong as it was in his prime, and the astrophysicist is more than ready with an answer for the anxious director.

"It's misbehaving." He states.

Fury was not amused by it. "Is that supposed to be funny?" He asks intolerably, for Fury was a man who demanded earnestness when essential, and detested humor's overuse when in conversation with him.

But Selvig emphasized the gravity of the situation. This thing, a simple geometric commodity that has been spoken of in myths and legends long since thought gone, and recently proven to be existent, is in fact exhibiting a power of its own doing. Pull the plug on it, and the Tesseract simply continues to run it, which would make sense as it is an energy source.

"We're prepared for this Doctor. Harnessing energy from space." Fury assures him.

But Selvig spots some holes in that tidbit of dialogue. "We don't have the harness; our calculations our incomplete. Now, she's throwing off interference, radiation. Nothing harmful, just low levels of gamma radiation."

But those last two words brought about an incredible feeling of uneasiness that washed over Fury in a wave of nostalgia, so then he looks around, scanning for the agent that was to overlook the whole motion of the project.

"Where's Barton."

"The Hawk?" Selvig asks without even looking the director in the eye. "Up in his nest as usual."

Dressed in black tactical gear, with his trademark compound bow and quiver, Agent Barton takes note of his boss' entrance with his piercing eyes. Upon hearing the director's command of report, he rappels down from his perch on the railings and joins Fury on a walk around the quarters in a discreet fashion.

"I gave you this detail so that you could keep a close eye on things." Fury said, a chiding edge in his voice.

"Well, I do better from a distance." He justified.

It was true. Agent Clint Barton was naturally gifted with far-sightedness. It's one of the few things that earned him his codename of Hawkeye.

And Fury, for all his complaining, is very aware of this. "Well, do you see anything that might set this thing off?" In their line of work, everyone is a potential suspect, capable of causing something that could set off a bomb the world is not prepared to take action against.

In a nutshell, Barton replied with a negative, but what he actually said was:

"No one's come or gone. The oven is clean. No contacts, no I.M.'s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end."

Fury did a double take at the end of that sentence. _"At this end?"_ He enunciated.

The agent looked at him, "The Cube is doorway to the other end of space, am I right?" He paused for a bit so that the impact can sink in. Barton was no scientist, but even the layman knows about the fundamentals of space and the dimensions.

"Doors open from both ends."

As Dr. Selvig's fingers fly over the keyboard, the object that had obtained the attention of the masses present suddenly released a surge of energy so powerful it generated tremors that could be felt by Hill and Coulson from their stations on the surface.

As the flares continue to dance around the Tesseract like as if it were some sort of blue, square sun, sounds akin to spark spits and boiling water growled and rolled until it released itself in the form of a cyan beam that strikes platform to which the CMS is wired.

The sounds from the artifact were now a roar, and the energy took shape in the form of a circular anomaly as bright as the sun, and for a moment, the mysterious of beauty of space, the stars, the ribbons of nebulas, the shimmering trails of comets, were all visible before an explosion of light swallows it all. The flash was strong everyone who valued their sight was forced to avert their eyes, and Dr. Selvig immediately ordered anyone who wasn't the least bit capable of wielding firearms to leave the scene at once, his voice raised to a shout as the winds stirred about caused his voice to fly about.

As the glare subsides well enough for everyone to look at the point of opening, there was someone standing where there was energy mass. His attire of gold and green slightly smoking from the hundreds of light-years of travel he had just undergone, he immediately recognizes the cold, hard metal floor on which he knelt, and a smile graced his handsome yet treacherous features.

Aside from the ostentatious armor, billowing emerald mantle, and the whites of his glinting green eyes, the thing that worried Fury, Barton, Selvig, and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents now flooding into the room, weapons ready to fire, was the scepter the man gripped in one hand. A beautifully carved specimen that would not look alien in the hands of a king, situated at the pointed was a small orb of energy that made the hairs on the back of Fury's neck stand in alarm. A man in flesh he may be, but the way he carried himself was not of this world, or its dominant race for that matter.

"Sir!" He said with as much calm as he could possibly muster at this point. "Please put down the spear."

The man looks at the object, and then, seems to comply with Fury's words only to aim it at the latter's direction and launch yet another round of energy fire. Barton was barely able to tackle his superior out of harm's way.

The man had just instigated a shoot-out, machine gun fire rings throughout the vacuum chamber, but is of little use, as his armor bounces the bullets off of him harmlessly. At his turn, most of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were either knocked down from the energy blasts, or were nursing wounds from special throwing knives the man kept on his person for times such as this.

Barton quickly recovers first, and seeing this, the man purposefully strides over to him. Before Barton could so much as shoot the man in the chest, the latter grabs his hand, and uses a voice that could lower the guard of even the palace guards in England.

"You have heart." And with that, he softly jabs the point of the scepter onto Barton's own chest. For a moment, the agent's sclera was now shelled in darkness, only to clear now that the scepter's cryptic workings have now enthralled him to the man. The other agents too met this fate as Fury takes this window of opportunity to take the Tesseract and keep in a case made especially for its containment.

Of course, the man might as well have eyes at the back of his head, because before Fury could so much as walk out of there, his possession of the troublesome artifact has now made him the object of the man's unwanted heed.

"Please don't," he says in a mocking tone of gentle request, "I still need that."

Nick Fury can't run any longer. He'd face a worse fate that having his thoughts taken over.

"This doesn't have to get any messier." He says as he turns.

"Of course it is. I have come too far for anything else. I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose."

Selvig, for one, could be not be any more at a loss as to this man's identity. He was of Scadinavian origin, and as such, learned of the myths of the North. The name _Loki_ was one he was all too familiar with, but not as myth dictates.

"Loki? Brother of Thor."

The expression on the Asgardian's face soured at the mention of the second name. To Fury on the other hand, it was one of familiarity.

"We have no quarrel with your people."

Loki turned to him with a hardened look. "An ant has no quarrel with a boot."

Fury did not like that what that analogy implied of the god's intentions or opinions. "Are you planning to step on us?"

But Loki then holds out his hands as if he were the Messiah. "I come with glad tidings, of a world made free."

The edge in Fury's voice was sharpening. "Free from what?"

"Freedom." Was Loki's simple reply before he continued, "Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that, in your heart-" He pauses turns to Selvig like a gunslinger, and before the scientist even knows what's happened, all his free will now Loki's to command.

He turns now to the only man left to bewitch. "You will know peace."

Fury takes this moment to take a crack at him. "Yeah when you say peace, I think you kinda mean the other thing."

It was at this moment that Agent Barton decides to speak his first words as Loki's minion. "Sir," he addresses the god with a tone that he had used only moment ago when conversing with Fury, "Director Fury is stalling. This place is about to blow. Drop a hundred feet of rock on us. He means to bury us."

"Like the pharaohs of old." Nick Fury did not become the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. by being soft. If this was his last stand, better go down fighting. From above the chamber, a large, lucid cloud of energy released by the Tesseract is enlarging by the second.

Selvig backs Barton up with his own readings. "He's right. The portal's collapsing in on itself. You've maybe got two minutes before this thing goes critical."

"Well then…" Loki then looks at Barton, issues him a silent command, and soon Fury finds himself shot and on the floor nursing his wounds as the rogue agents leave with their less than pleasant charge and made for the parking lot. Along the way, they pass by Agent Hill, who is more than puzzled to see Loki taking the lead.

"Who's that?" She inquires of Barton, unaware of his compromise.

"He didn't tell me."

She turns away, her female intuition telling her something's not right. A breath later, her walkie-talkie buzzes with life as her boss' voice cracks through the speaker.

"Hill do you copy?!" Fury hisses as he tries to pull the bullet from his side. "Barton is-"

The audible heavy breathing of his voice was incentive enough for Hill to turn and fire in the same second, but in her momentary distraction, Barton had already commandeered a truck and was now shooting back at Hill with incredible accuracy.

"He's got the Tesseract! Track it down!" Fury says between breaths as he exits the chamber. "The energy's really brewing a fucking shit storm from the vacuum chamber ceiling."

Meanwhile, some agents with a sixth sense are now trying to stop the rogue agents carrying the mysterious person away from the premises, and a drive-by shoot out ensues. Loki, with the power of his scepter, swimmingly flips the trucks over on their backs. Hill, who is on a jeep, puts a good distance between herself and Loki. If she's going to do this, she has to without endangering herself.

Meanwhile Fury and Coulson are now in the center of an earthquake. The latter shepherds the last of the agents while Fury tries to get out in the middle of a rainstorm of pipes. Coulson manages to get into a van, while Fury races to the chopper still seated on the landing pad. He could only so much as jump just as the landing pad gave way from the massive seismic activity that sends the entire facility to the ground.

Back to Hill, she manages to pull up to the left of Barton's vehicle. In this case, having the much smaller jeep is an advantage as she advances, does a full three-hundred and sixty degree turn, so that she is now facing the larger truck as Barton opens fire either to move her out of the way or put a few bullets in her so that he can escort Loki in peace. Either way, Hill doesn't relent and releases her own rounds at him. However, she only manages to get out of the way as Barton seemingly decides to run her over and floors it.

As all these events transpire, the Tesseract's accumulated energy collapses itself into a minute sphere of light, and then it is released in one shockwave of pure cosmic energy that causes the place to close in on itself. Anyone in the vicinity can feel the backwash of it and see the implosion and its terrifying effects on the building.

Unfortunately, that was only the tip of iceberg.

As Barton drives out of the parking lot tunnel, and makes headway into the desert, a mysterious figure suddenly falls out of the sky and lands onto the hood of the truck. As far as Loki's concerned, this is someone who would do well on his side, and so Barton pulls the stranger from his perilous position outside and positions his chest towards Loki's scepter. The front door pulls open, and the stranger, a person that looked to be about in his early twenties, rolls into the dirt and suddenly begins to bubble as his human skin gives way to something a lot viler.

A creature with a slender, toothed head and body, a thick muscular tail, scaly skin that was predominantly blue, and a single protruding horn from its head began sprinting alongside the jeep. Overall, its body gave observers the impression that they were staring at some breed of mutated dinosaur.

Fury's chopper meanwhile, slides the door open and the man inside begins to shoot at the vehicle. Infuriated by the man's persistence, Loki looks up at him with a hateful glare and emits one last blast of energy from his scepter, causing the copter's blades to catch fire and Fury to leap out at the last minute as the aircraft is gone in plume of flames. Fury tries to shoot from where he is, but Loki smirks at the man's hopeless attempts as he knows they've put enough ground between them for him to lower his guard.

His mind reeling, Fury receives a call from Coulson.

"The Tesseract is with the hostile force. I have men down." He then turns his focus on another person whom he knows is still alive. "Hill?"

And he knows well. Hill responds from the rubble, her jeep sandwiched in the debris, luckily, she herself hasn't sustained any life-threatening injuries. "A lot of men still under. Don't know how many survivors."

Fury doesn't want to accept the gravity of the situation they're under in, but what other choice did he have. "Sound the general call." He speaks onto his device. "I want every not soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase."

Hill responds with an affirmative. With that, Fury returns to discuss the matter with Coulson.

"Get back to base. This is a Level Seven. As of right now, we are at war."

Coulson registers the Director's words an omen of great foreboding. After a moment of silent thought, he then asks the director a question to which he hopes Fury has an answer to.

"What do we do?"

Fury, indifferent to the flaming ruins of the chopper, looks out onto the road where Loki made his getaway. The creature that had come from a person was still outlined in the distance of the horizon. Fury trains his eyes on it as only one solution comes to mind.


	2. Forming the Team

Everyone holding up just fine? Well, Part 2 guys. As usual, review your opinion.

* * *

 **Solenski Plaza. 3** **rd** **Floor. Nighttime.**

And so it begins here. On a building in the middle of the construction process, situated by the side of a railroad track.

It is here that a large (not to mention very corrupt) Russian man, General Georgi Luchkov has held someone hostage. That someone being a slewing, foxy, woman with shoulder-length red hair roughly bound to a simple wooden chair held by his associate over the edge of an open floor.

Her beautiful face was at the mercy of a rough backhand by Luchkov, but she did not seem to mind the sting.

"This is not how I wanted the evening to go." He tells her in his native tongue.

"I know how you wanted this evening to go. Believe me this is better." She replies back with the same fluency.

He, on the other hand, was stung by that witty remark, and he made sure she was fully aware of that when he gestures to the tall thug holding her chair to move it a little closer over the edge.

"I'd like to know why they sent you to carry out a carrier, stained glass, and other random items."

Natasha tries to keep her composure, knowing that it will only bring him satisfaction if she ever so much as makes a peep. "I thought General Soholob was in charge of the exporting business."

The man then smiles coldly at her statement. "Soholob? Your reputation is quite a progression." He walks in a straight line before returning his gaze to hers.

"The famous Black Widow." He remarks. "Nothing but a pretty face."

She looks at him with an endearing look. "You really think I'm pretty?"

But Luchkov will not be so seduced so easily. He motions for her mouth to be opened, then grabs a pair of pliers from the wooden table behind him.

"We do not need the Lermontov to send tanks. Tell him well…"

Then that spine-chilling, whiskery grin. "You may have to write it down." He finds the transition to English relatively easy, used to his accent so prominent in his speech. Though he may be a corrupt weapons dealer by profession, Luchkov is a Russian by blood, and he is quite proud of it.

The deadly exchange is broken as the cellphone of a weaselly-looking man blares its ringtone. Annoyed Luchkov directs him to get it over with, and the man answers, then hands it Luchkov, saying that it's addressed to the woman in the room.

Before he could even so much as start his sentence, the voice of Agent Phil Coulson breaks through the phone's speaker.

"You're at 114 Solenski Plaza, 3rd floor. We have an F22 exactly 8 miles out. Put the woman on the phone or I will blow up the block before you can make the lobby."

The details of that call left no room for further debate. Luchkov places the cellphone against Natasha's ear, and she answers with a tone that would imply a much more…safe and sound profession.

"We need you to come in."

"Are you kidding? I'm working." She says in a tone that hides all traces of her Russian lineage. She looks up at Luchkov like as if he wasn't going to pull out her teeth in the next minute.

"This takes precedence." Coulson voice insisted on the other line.

"I'm in the middle of an interrogation. This moron is giving me everything."

Luchkov was taken aback by that, but even as he states denial, his voice falters as he suddenly realizes her now valid point.

"Look you can't pull me out of this right now."

Coulson then sighs heavily as he begins to tell the part of the news that he knows will get her to change her mind. "Natasha," he pauses as he considers on how to break it to her.

He decides for a short, but concise sentence. "Barton's been compromised." Those three words were enough to cause a feeling alarm well up from the pit of her stomach.

"Let me put you on hold." She said, nodding to Luchkov who takes the phone back. Natasha uses that moment of vulnerability to hit him with her leg and follow-up with a headbutt. She elegantly dispatches the thug nearest to her chair with some skillful kickboxing, trips the other henchman, rolls over him, and then stamps the peg of her chair to the taller of the two, before knocking him out with yet another fiery headbutt. Finally, she breaks free of her restraints after flipping over the smaller thug before using his body as a crude axe. Drop kicking the tall guy, she uses her legs to hold him, knocking him out cold and for good this time.

All the while, Agent Coulson waits for her to finish before briefing her on the next part of the plan.

"Where's Barton now?" Natasha asks him, trying not to sound desperate.

"We don't know?"

"But he's alive?"

"We think so." There is that itchy feeling at the base of her skull again. "I'll brief you on everything when you get back, but first we need you to talk to the big guy."

She laughed at the request. "Coulson, you know that Stark trust me about as far as he can throw me."

And who can blame him? Impersonating a very sexy secretary just to keep tabs on him, only to find out he, a billionaire who has control and influence on almost every place where technology is an integrated part of life, has no power over her. No one likes to be played that way.

And that's why she secretly enjoys her job. It gives her a chance to use her own brand of power.

But she didn't exactly get the point in this case. "No I've Stark" Coulson confirms. "You get the _big guy_."

A few beats passed as she tried to digest the meaning of those last five words before Coulson ends the call.

"Bozhe moi."

Not long after the Black Widow left Luchkov dangling from a rusty chain, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were deployed to retrieve him. Unfortunately, they were too late.

Luchkov was dead.

Though they were trained to handle all forms of physical and mental torture, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents did have their moments of disgust, and when they saw the state of the weapons dealer, they were, least to say, utterly revolted at the sight of his body, which was poked with circular wounds that exposed his innards and were secreting a strange purple sludge. His two associates were found in similar conditions, with the smaller of the pair missing a finger and his ears, while another looked like he had died choking on a purple smoothie.

As they reported it, they were at a loss as to what could have done this. The organization that they've worked for has seen some pretty weird crap lately, but nothing that ever circulates at HQ comes close to this. They felt like that they were on the sight of a horror movie.

The paranoia was the primary spur for them to hurry back to headquarters.

But they were lucky, Luchkov's killer had a lot of opening to make a move, but instead maintained a fixed position on the ceiling.

The creature was a leech given the body of a gecko and the wings of a dragon, though these wings weren't much use for flying. Its underside was a bright red, while its top was a slimy gray. Both ends of its body were flat and paddle shaped, but the mouth was filled with circular rows of teeth used to inflict those injuries on Luchkov and his cronies, and the glowing markings indicated that this creature was of a poisonous nature.

Gigginox were cavernous monsters that swoop down on their prey before they even see it coming. Their venom comes to them in large, slick balls, and despite their somewhat frail build, they are very enduring, and quite successful in their kingdom without light.

This one was in search of a body heat signature belonging to a human female who had been in the area a while ago, now she was gone. Had Luchkov's men not screamed, maybe it wouldn't have been provoked into attacking and killing them.

But now, the mission would continue, and so, with its purple markings flaring their shine, Gigginox crawls out from the Plaza and continues on its way.

 **The Slums of India. Nighttime.**

A life of poverty was not one for a child. There were too many hazards that they were not yet physically and psychologically prepared to face. With no one to look after and care for them, many underage boys and girls search out jobs that can grant even a single coin so that they may feed themselves, while many more others resort to less…acceptable methods of acquiring their wants and needs.

But Bruce Banner did not judge a person by how much money they had. His time in India had allowed him to be a little more generous, as he went from house to house, treating people of whatever ails them. Diseases were common in the less pleasant areas, and Bruce was the only one compassionate to do whatever it takes to bring relief to the afflicted and their loved ones, even if they had nothing to give him.

So when the girl arrives at the makeshift shack, begging to speak with him, it was her eyes, full of pain and pleading, not the money she held in her right palm, that moved him to follow her into a more remote part of the slums, where she turns around and suddenly disappears, leaving him to stand there like an idiot.

"Should have gotten paid up front Banner."

"You know, for a man who's supposed to be avoiding stress, you sure picked a hell of a place to settle."

The redhead says as she steps out from behind a curtain. Banner, keeping a check on his pulse, turns around slowly to meet with a pair of lovely green eyes that concealed the nature of this woman's profession.

"Avoiding stress isn't the answer."

"Then what is it? Yoga?" Natasha uses the chat strategy to throw a target, especially one of the opposite sex, off guard, but with this man, she was genuinely intrigued by his…condition.

Banner avoids answering. "You brought me to the edge of the city." He notes. "Smart, and I, uh, assume the whole place is surrounded."

Natasha gives a slight shrug of her head. "Just you and me."

"Who are you?" Banner finally manages to ask the fiery-haired vixen.

"Natasha Romanoff." Ah, a Russian.

"Are you to kill me Miss Romanoff? Because that's not going to work out for everyone." The doctor says as his mind flashes back to a place with only the roar of the wind and the biting touch of the snow for company.

"No, no. Of course not. I'm here on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D."

The name was familiar to Banner. "S.H.I.E.L.D." He paused. "How'd they find me?"

"We never lost you Doctor. We've kept our distance." Natasha explains patiently and softly as possible so as to not attract attention. "Even helped keep some other interested parties off you scent."

So that was why every time he looked across his back, he saw nothing. "Why?" He asks.

"Nick Fury seems to trust you, but now we need you to come in."

He ponders on the possible events awaiting him based on the two basic answers he could possibly the woman at this moment.

"What if I say no?"

"I'll persuade you." She replies with a smile that meant more than it shows.

Here comes the hard part. "And what if…the other guy says no?"

"You've been more than a year without an incident." Natasha reassures him. "I don't think you want to break that streak."

A smile cracks Banner's lips. "Well, I don't always get what I want."

Natasha decides that it's time to bring Banner up to speed on the events. The sooner she does, the sooner she can find the man who saved her life those many years ago.

"Doctor we're facing a major global catastrophe."

Banner laughs nervously. "Well, those I actively try to avoid."

She slides a document saved onto her cellphone.

"This, is the Tesseract. It has the potential energy to wipe out the planet."

He takes out a pair of glasses from his coat pocket. "What does Fury want me to do, swallow it?"

"He wants you to find it. It's been taken. It emits a gamma signature that's too weak for us to trace. There's no one know gamma radiation like you do. If there was, that's where I'd be."

Banner was used to that. People who knew him, the _real him_ , tended to distance themselves. He knew it was for both his and their own good. He didn't want a repeat of what happened a few years back, to when this nightmare all began.

But now, an organization that's been trying to keep the peace by giving him peace is now reaching out to him for help. He should try to help out in return for all they've done.

But kindness can be a mask to more…ulterior motives.

"So Fury isn't after the monster?"

"Not that he's told me." She admitted.

"And he tells you everything?" One of the few questions in a million that she had no answer to.

"Talk to Fury he needs you on this."

"He needs me in a cage."

"No one's going to put you in a-"

"STOP LYING TO ME!"

The thunderous tone immediately awakens in Natasha all her years of training as she points her gun at him, expecting him to shift…to lose himself in his anger.

But instead, Bruce Banner composes himself, and his dark eyes found hers and he apologizes to her.

"I'm sorry, that was mean. I just wanted to see what you'd do."

Natasha still trained her gun at him, expecting the worst.

"Why don't we do this the easy way, where you don't use that and the…other guy…doesn't make a mess? Okay? Natasha?" He holds his hands up in surrender, anything to get her to lower the damn weapon.

And finally she does, and speaks into a well-hidden earpiece. "Stand down." Outside, dozens of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents lower their weapons at the woman spearheading this delicate operation.

Banner looks at Natasha, charming a smile her way. "Just you and me huh?"

Normally, she was supposed to cut men's tongues short, but in this situation, she averts herself, fidgeting now that she's been forced to expose herself. She wasn't so sure if it's the other guy she should be afraid of, or this one, the goody two-shoes doctor who was a way with words.

 **S.H.I.E.L.D. Analytical Room. Nighttime.**

Nick Fury had just received word about the dead Colonel Luchkov. Apparently, someone didn't want him back alive. The description of his injuries left him dumbstruck. Fury doubts humans were the cause of this, but no animal alive matches the bite marks on the Russian's corpse.

He would worry about that later. Now, he's got the World Council to deal with.

"This is out of line Director. You're dealing with forces you can't control." A male voice speaks from one of several giant monitors that each harbored a silhouette of a Council member.

"Have you ever been in a way Councilman? In a firefight? Did you ever feel an abundance of control?" Fury asserted that question?"

"You are saying that this Asgard has declared war on our planet?"

"Not Asgard. Loki" Fury recapitulates. Some days, he feels he needs a bottle on aspirin on hand for these conferences. Especially when it's these royal pricks on the screens.

"He can't be working alone." Another voice, female this time. "What about the other one? His brother?"

"Our intelligence says Thor is not a hostile, but he's worlds away, we can't depend on him to help either. It's up to us."

"Which is why you should be moving on to Phase Two." The first Council member says in a reproving tone. "It was designed for exactly this-"

"Phase Two isn't ready" Fury reasons. "Our enemy is. We need a response team."

"The Avengers Initiative was shut down."

"This isn't about the Avengers."

"We're running the world's greatest covert security network, and you're going to leave the fate of the human race to a handful of freaks."

No. That wasn't it. Fury isn't the type of person to run crying to his mom if his bike gets stolen. No, he knows the odds are stacked against him. Time is something he doesn't have much of, and if he doesn't respond to Loki's warmongering threats, then he doesn't deserve his title. Sure some of these people are isolated, unbalanced, but all they need is a common goal to bind them into the unit Fury hopes can point guns that can match Loki's power.

"You believe?" One Council member asks him.

"War isn't won by sentiment Director." Another states.

"No." He agrees. "It's won by soldiers."  
_

New York.

Soldiers the likes of the man taking his time, and his regrets and pains out on a poor sandbag. Steve Rogers was someone who was known historically throughout America as one of World War II's' greatest success stories, yet you might wonder why he is still the same, sandy haired, blue eyed man you see in the old news articles.

Because as the world progressed seventy years into the future, he lay in the ice, frozen after crashing a plane, fragments of the war times passing through his mind until suddenly, he was excavated, very cold, but very much alive.

But the new age is too much for Rogers, and the fact that his former life keeps calling out to him in the voices of his old friends isn't too consoling either. In fact, it's disrupting his sleep cycle, so the only way for him get it out of his systems is if he works those fists on something that can take a lot of hits.

So he starts the day looking at the dossiers of his colleagues, goes out for a cup of coffee, takes the subway, and heads for a boxing gym.

Unfortunately, the pain subsides and worsens with every day, and that can leave with a sandbag punched open. As the grains spill out onto the polished floor of the gym, Rogers props another one and continues, not even minding the dark figure that emerged from the shadows until he addressed the veteran.

"Trouble sleeping?"

Rogers was relieved to know it only the man kind enough to introduce him to the twenty-first century, as well as the one to find him a place in it.

"I've slept for seventy years sir. I think I've had my fill"

"Then you should be out celebrating, seeing the world." The director recommends.

"When I went under, the world was art war. When I woke up, they say we won." He takes a solemn pause. "They didn't say what we lost."

Fury knows that with people like this, the truth must come in small doses. Too big and they could choke from the information. "We've made a few mistakes along the way. Some very recently."

"You here with a mission sir?" Rogers, the ever-ready man.

"I am."

"Trying to get me back in the world?" Rogers asks. He'll admit, despite the modernization of the present, which loomed over him like an intimidating shadow, mankind has really progressed as they turned what their mind conceives into reality.

He is handed a file, and its contents contained a familiar object he had nearly died trying to acquire.

"Hydra's secret weapon…" he muttered.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you." Steve looked Fury directly in the eye in order to counter the flinch racking his body. "He thought what we think. The Tesseract could be the key to unlimited, sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

Steve reviewed the file once more. "Who took it from you?"

"He's called Loki. He's not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

Steve wipes some sweat from his forehead. "At this point, I doubt anything will surprise me."

"Ten bucks says you're wrong." As Steve turns to pack up his things and leave the gym, Fury gives him some additional instructions. "There's a debriefing package waiting for you back at your apartment."

"Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

Steve really didn't blame Howard. The inventor meant well, but…

"You should have left it in the ocean." The First Avenger said aloud.

New York. Underwater. Nighttime.

Tony Stark had been famous once before as the Merchant of Death. Now, he's gaining twice the popularity as the armored superhero Iron Man courtesy of his electromechanical exoskeletons that he engineered himself. These suits operate every efficiently due to another personal creation of Tony's: the arc reactor. Now, he's about to test this energy on something a lot bigger than his armor.

His personal business tower and living quarters situated here in the hustle of bustle of Manhattan.

Once he's attached the reactor to an underwater pipeline, he emerges from the water and sets a course for home.

"Good to go on this end. The rest is up to you." Tony says from within his suit.

"Did you disconnect the transition lines? Are we off the grid?" Pepper Potts says from her position.

"Stark Tower is about to become a beacon of self-sustaining clean energy." Tony says proudly.

"Assuming the arc reactor takes over and actually works." Pepper, unlike her boss and boyfriend, actually sees failure as a possibility, but she's not one to doubt one of the smartest men in the world.

"I _assume_." Tony maneuvers left so that he can see his cherished Stark Tower up ahead. "Light her up!"

Pepper obliges, and the building becomes dotted with beams of sky-blue. The lightshow's star however, is at its pinnacle, where the Stark Industries logo becomes the spotlight of many inquisitive civilians down below.

"How does it look?" Pepper asks.

"Like Christmas, but with more…me." When there is praise for his work, you can count on Tony to pick up on it, even if he's halfway around the world.

"We've got to wider on the public awareness campaign. You need to do some press." The excitement in his lover's voice was also something he could easily tell, seeing as Ms. Potts was the only woman he ever truly loved. "I'm in DC tomorrow, I'm working on the zoning for the next three buildings-"

And he cuts the line there. "Pepper, you're killing me. The moment, remember? Enjoy the moment." He prompts.

"Get in here and I will." She says in a very suggestive tone.

Tony arrives at his skyscraper penthouse and proceeds to relieve himself of his armor using a series of spinning rims fitted with mechanical arms that is positioned on a gauntlet.

"Sir." A voice speaks. "Agent Coulson of S.H.I.E.L.D. is on the line."

"I'm not in." Tony says moments before his helmet is removed. "I'm actually out."

A few more steps. "Sir. I'm afraid he's insisting."

"Grow a spine J.A.R.V.I.S." Tony tells his personal AI. "I got a date."

The billionaire walks in to see a strawberry blonde with a white buttoned shirt and denim shorts looking up at the statistics of the arc reactor through a holographic projection.

"Levels are holding steady. I think"

"Of course they are. I was directly involved, which brings me to my next question: How does it feel to be a genius?"

Pepper turns around to meet her boyfriend's gaze. "What do you mean? All this came from you." He says proudly, pointing to her.

Being in a relationship has changed Tony Stark for the better. He has learned to give a little more each day, a must in every successful relationship, which he hopes for himself and for this lovely young lady, whose demeanor on her first day as his assistant has earned her his trust.

"No. All this came from that" And Pepper, from day one, has already seen that Tony's douchebag's exterior needs only be opened in the right way to see the heart of gold that lies beyond the circle of light at the center of his chest, to which she is gesturing at present.

"Give yourself some credit. Please." He puts his hands gently on her shoulders. "Stark Tower is your baby. Give yourself twelve percent of the credit."

And that's when the arguing begins. "Twelve percent?" Pepper asks in disbelief. " _Twelve percent?_ For my baby?"

"An argument can be made for fifteen." He says between the lines. "Well I did do all the heavy lifting." He points out. "Literally. I lifted the heavy things." Clever of him to leave out the part wherein he did those acts of menial labor in a suit of armor that enhances the wearer's strength.

"And sorry," he continues, "But the security snafu, that was on you. My private elevator-"

"Our elevator."

"-was teeming with sweaty workmen." Tony reminisces as he catches sight of the look on his girlfriend's face. "I'm going to pay for that comment on percentages in some subtle way later, aren't I?"

The mischief was rearing more of itself. "Not going to be that subtle."

Hoping to turn this conversation somewhere other than the punishment Pepper has in mind, he plactes her with the promise that the next building will say "POTTS"

"On the lease." There is that Pepper-brand intelligence again.

"Call your mom. Can you bunk over?" But before he can get an answer from her, J.A.R.V.I.S. returns with a vengeance as he urgently informs his creator that his protocols are being overridden. The phone than comes to life with Phil's voice and face on the screen. Tony holds it up to his face.

"Stark, we need to talk." _You asked for this Agent._

"You have reached the Life Model Decoy of Tony Stark. Please leave a message." Pepper tries hard not to laugh at the ridiculous antics that were an everyday part of her boyfriend's life, be it in the professional or civilian world.

"This is urgent."

"Then leave it urgently." The billionaire rebuffs stubbornly. Agent Coulson does in the flesh as the elevator opens and he steps into the penthouse.

"Security breach!" Proclaims Tony. "That's on you." He glances at Pepper.

"Mr. Stark." Agent Coulson says, the smile on his face hiding the fact that he was fuming after the constant rebuttal of entry.

"Phil, come in." Pepper says warmly.

For a genius, Tony was oblivious to the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent's first name. "Phil? I thought his first name was Agent." His comment went unentertained.

"Come on in. We're celebrating."

"Which is why he can't stay." Tony reasons frankly.

Coulson then hands a digital file towards the inventor, who leaves him hanging on the pretense that he doesn't like to be handed things. He saved by Pepper, who remarks that she does and trades her glass of champagne for the file, gives the document to Tony and graciously accepts her glass back from Phil.

"Thank you." She says brightly.

"Official consulting hours are between eight and five every other Thursday."

"This isn't a consultation." The suited man says a matter-of-factly.

"Is this about the Avengers?" Pepper asks, then awkwardly denies any knowledge involving the Initiative. Tony points out that it was scrapped, and (bitterly) that he didn't even qualify.

"Yeah apparently, I'm volatile, self-obsessed, don't play well with others."

That, Pepper was all too aware of, seeing as how she's either accompanying, or babysitting him. I mean, this man had the guts to goad a senator into flipping off his name on national television. Who does that?!

"This isn't about personality profiles anymore." The exigency in his tone resurfacing.

But Tony is willing to spend time with his girl, and he's not going to let the affairs of a federal organization get in the way of his night.

Pepper however, thinks its sweet of Tony to go around saving lives. And with the latest feed of Loki and the Tesseract, she insists that he do his job as Iron Man, bribing him with…well…I'm not exactly sure whatever it was she whispered into his ear that made Tony look like Christmas had come early.

As both of them wished each other good luck, with Pepper ending the night's festivities by asking Coulson about his personal life, specifically his relationship status, Tony grabs the holographic image of the Cube. The artifact was present in his father's notes while he was trying to replicate a substitute element that would serve as the power source for his armor due to the prototype causing palladium poisoning. He had overseen it, but never forgot that square.

Howard Stark, through his son, had some unfinished business regarding the Tesseract.

 **The next day…**

On a SHIELD Quinjet, Steve reviews the footage of a powerful humanoid monster called the Hulk attacking present-day Culver University in the year 2008, while the pilot informs Agent Coulson that they are about forty minutes out from base, to which the latter stands.

"So this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum they used on me?"

"A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought that gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."

Steve looks at the gamma-irradiated monster as it tears a jeep apart like it was made of paper.

"Didn't really go his way did it?"

"Not so much. When he's not that thing though, the guy's like a Stephen Hawking." Phil says, forgetting that Hawking was after Steve's time, but explains the metaphor after noticing and comprehending the confusion on the super-soldier's face.

"I gotta say, it's an honor to meet you officially." Steve smiles at that.

"I sort of met you. I mean I watched you while you were sleeping." Steve looks down, feeling awkward by that statement. Phil stumbles around trying to make it sound less creepy, but Steve's only answer was that he hopes he can meet Coulson's and Fury's expectations.

Captain America was Phil's childhood hero, so he was with the man full circle. "We've made some modifications to the uniform. I had a little design input." He adds at the end.

"The uniform? Aren't the stars and stripes a little…old fashioned?" _Just like me?_

"With everything that's happened, with the things that are about to come to light, the people might just need a little old-fashioned." Phil says to him not as a fanatic, but as his equal.

The sentiment was taken by Steve. It was nice to see that some people still stick to the righteous principals of old in a world that changes by the second.

The destination of the pair was a massive battleship with two runways. One of which aligns with the vessel's spine and leads to a hangar at the rear.

Coulson and Steve walk down the path before Natasha intercepts them with an important message for Phil. As he makes his way to the bridge, the Russian agent takes over Steve's orientation.

"It was quite the buzz around here, finding in the ice. I thought Coulson was going to swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"

"Trading cards?" Steve parrots, unaware of the existence of such products.

"They're vintage. He's very proud." She says monotonously.

In the distance, a nervous Bruce Banner fidgets with the buttons on his coat. Steve is the first to spot him.

"Dr. Banner!" He greets, extending his hand out for the scientist to shake.

He awkwardly takes it, "Uh yeah. Hi, they told me you'd be coming."

"Word is you can find the Cube."

"Is that the only word on me?"

"Only word I care about." Already Banner was starting to see why many people respect this man, and from that moment onwards, he would be part of that wagon.

"It must be strange for you. All of this." Banner says, gesturing to all the technology and aircrafts that no longer needed propellers on their noses.

Steve rests his eyes on the agents performing drills, a sight that causes the blue in his irises to twinkle with fond memories of the past. "Actually, this is kind of familiar."

"Gentleman." Natasha cautions. "You may want to step inside for a minute. It's going to be a little hard to breathe."

Before they could open their mouths to ask? The entire vessel begins to shake, and people are evacuating the open areas.

"Is this a submarine?" Steve asks, in for a very big surprise at the direction the battleship was going in.

"Really?" Banner raises his voice as the wind begins to pick up around them. "They want me in a submerged, pressurized, metal container?"

As the curious men move closer to the edge, they see the water churns to reveal two enormous lift fans that propel the ship into a vertical take-off and landing flight.

"No, no, this is much worse." Banner yells through the roar of the wind and the unified scream of the engines. Steve is just in awe. Never before had he seen a flying ship, and until now, he thought he wouldn't live to see the day.

Looks like he owes Fury ten bucks…

As the massive aircraft vanishes with the use of its retro-reflection panels, the sea churns. This time, with life. There are no fish in sight, even the sharks, and marine mammals seem to be keen on making themselves scarce.

A normal reaction whenever you get a sea monster in your endless blue neighborhood. The creature in question was a massive reptile covered in a coral-blue shell, sported a long snake-like neck and tail, and has feet like those of an alligator, expect more vicious.

The monster can't see the airborne vessel, but it doesn't need to. The fuel, the metal and glass were scents clear to the monster's olfaction.

And more importantly, it managed to sniff out the blood of the two humans its master was interested in. As the ship sails further and further into the sky, the leviathan's mouth gargles with electricity and its eyes are lost in a blue flash. The Lagiacrus then descends into the deep blue and begins to swim in pursuit of the Helicarrier...


	3. Where the Wild Things Are

There are some disadvantages to announcing an intention of world subjugation. One, the world's inhabitants may not take the words to kind. Second, they would also call for a bounty on one's head. And lastly, if you really wish for what you desire to be real, you must work in conditions that are…less than satisfactory to your personal criteria.

In spite of all that, Loki was able to amass mercenaries, scientists, and the necessary equipment needed to fulfill his plan. The next part of his plan was undergoing development.

But he was in no rush. The exiled prince of Asgard uses this time to meditate, to stabilize the power within him. His minions were not without competence, especially the archer Barton, the scientist, Selvig, whom he was well acquainted with, and then there was that boy who acquired the power of shapeshifting through the technology of humankind.

They say good triumphs over evil, but Loki is one to question that statement. Loki was able to peer into Jacob Hunter's mind the moment the latter had fallen to his scepter. This boy was an underdog, someone who garnered no fame whatsoever on Earth.

But on the planet of Minegarde, an Earth of supersized proportions, he is hailed far and wide as a hero who fights in the hides of the fauna of the lands. On that planet, animals fight with more than tusks and brute strength. Their physiologies grant abilities that include but are not limited to breathing fire, generating electricity, production of copious amounts of poison, and even the ability to survive in the extremes and probably immunity to most diseases.

Jake's history on that planet is growing, but he's even made a name for himself. Monster Hunter.

 _How quaint_. The trickster muses as his mind is pulled back into the abyss from where his powers originate.

" _The Chitauri grow restless_." The Other hisses.

"Let them gird themselves." Loki says. "I will lead them in a glorious battle."

" _Battle? Against the meager might of Earth_?" The Other questions him.

"Glorious." Loki clarifies. "Not lengthy." He look at the Other, swathed in those rags he calls robes. "If your force is as formidable as you claim."

The Other rushes him, and the god resists the urge to pull his grotesque fingers from his throat. " _You question us, you question Him?! He, who put the scepter in your hand, who gave you ancient knowledge and purpose when you were cast out, defeated?!_ "

"I was a king!" Loki says forcefully. "The rightful king of Asgard"

The Other sneers at him from beneath his mask. " _Your ambition is little, and born of childish need._ " He then looks out into space, into the blackness that shrouds more secrets than it should. " _We look beyond the Earth. To greater worlds the Tesseract will unveil._ "

"You don't have the Tesseract yet." Loki points out.

Meaning to attack, the Other stops as Loki points his scepter towards him, more of a threat than a line of defense, but his next words curtain those intentions.

"I don't threaten, but until I open the doors, until your force is mine to command, you are but words." He says those lines with confidence, knowing that they are true as truth can be.

The Other retracts himself, but while his back is turned, he utters a last warning to the mischief-maker.

" _You will have your war, Asgardian_." Loki does not bother to correct him, more focused on the aura exuding from the being's shriveled form.

" _If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us…there will be no realm…no barren moon…no crevice, where he cannot find you_." He then places a bony finger on Loki's forehead, more dead than alive. " _You think you know pain_ ," he drawls as the scene begins to burn with a harsh light. " _He will make you long for something sweet as pain._ "

The link is broken in a flash, and Loki finds himself shaking.

 _It's from the strain of the effort_. He tells himself, trying to swallow down the fear those last words brought upon him. He is not doing his best for anybody but himself. He fears no one.

His pride has not only made him dark, it has also made him blind.

Meanwhile, Selvig and a handful of scientists circle the CMS device as Clint Barton walks in, holding a tablet.

"Put it over there!" Selvig tells a man before turning back to the agent. "Where did you find these people?"

"S.H.I.E.L.D. has no shortage of enemies Doctor." He holds up the tablet screen, showing what looks like silver, though the contents tell otherwise. "Is this what you need?"

Selvig barely got a glance of it, but he recognizes the element "Yeah iridium. It's found in meteorites, forms anti-protons. It's very hard to get a hold of."

Barton agrees. "Especially if S.H.I.E.L.D. knows you need it."

"Well I didn't know." Selvig says as soon as Loki walks into the room, followed by Jacob Hunter, with his short spiky hair with red fringes. He was dressed in a simple black shirt with a thin red collar, an open sleeveless jacket, and black motorcycle jeans. His irises were yellow and somewhat lizard like.

"Hey!" Selvig says to Loki in a tone that suggests anything but the fact that they had a relationship of friction. "The Tesseract has shown me so much. It's more than knowledge, it's…truth." He smiles.

"I know. What did it show you Agent Barton?" The magician inquires of the marksman.

"My next target." The boy walked out at those words, he already had his instructions.

"Tell me what you need."

"Well," Barton says as he opens a long case which held his bow. "I'll need a distraction."

He pulls at the string. "And an eyeball."

 **S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. Daytime.**

Nick Fury gives the two men he's been anticipating a one-eyed look over.

"Gentlemen-" He manages just before Steve gives him exactly ten dollars. It looks like America's poster boy still doesn't get the hand of sarcasm.

He turns to Banner. "Doctor, thank you for coming."

"Thanks for asking nicely." Bruce replies dryly. "So how long am I staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear."

"And where are you with that?" He asks of the director as Natasha looks over to a file of Clint.

Coulson was the one to speak for Fury. "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us.

"That's still not going to find them in time." Natasha points out. With her, the word _them_ leans more to Barton.

Banner was in agreement. "You have to narrow your field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?"

This was something Fury was not in the know of. "How many are there?"

"Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays." Bruce directs. "I'll work out a tracking algorithm based on cluster recognition. At least we could work out a few places." He looks to the main entrance of the bridge. "Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

Fury leaves Romanoff to escort the scientist to the lab. "You're going to love it Doc, we've got all the toys." She says as she leads him down to the facility.

Meanwhile, Steve is on standby, where he soon catches with Phil, even daring to ask him about his _collection_.

Phil, embarrassed, awkwardly asks Steve if he could autograph them, to which the super-soldier obliges. He then breaks into detail how he obtained them until-

"We got a hit." Agent Jasper Sitwell announces. "Sixty-seven percent match. Weight, cross match, sixty-nine percent."

"Location?"

"Stuttgart, Germany. 28, Konigstrasse. He's not exactly hiding." Sitwell acknowledges.

Fury gives the green light to the Captain, who nods and leaves for his locker to meet with an old friend.

 **Stuttgart Musuem. Nighttime.**

It was gala night, and the extravagance of the place was highlighted. Marble walls, polished furniture, and lavish paintings do give buildings a high regard in the eyes of the wealthy and powerful, but people have a multiplying effect on the aesthetics of things, especially with attires and an ambiance that conforms to the theme.

This necessity for correspondence is why Loki sees it fit to dress as what mortals would call formal and proper. With his robes under his suit and his scepter a cane to the blind eye, he walks down the stairs while outside, several guards are downed with arrows as Hawkeye steals his way into the vault, which can only be accessed by a retinal scanner.

Loki loses his subtlety the moment he sees the man. He flips his cane, clubs the man meaning to shoot him. He then proceeds to flip the head doctor onto a marble carving of an antlered bilgesnipe, a familiar creature to him, and then takes out an optical torture device and plunges it into the doctor's eye as Hawkeye receives it, infiltrates the vault, and takes the glass thermos with the iridium, a cylinder of it, inside. Unlike Robin Hood, this robbery is not for a cause of good.

The chaos spills into the museum square as Loki slips into his familiar armor, complete with a horned helmet, and proceeds to herd the people with illusions of himself.

"Kneel before me." He demands as police cars find themselves upturned before the police could so much as step out the doors.

"I said," he begins as the fools continue their irksome screaming,

"KNEEL!"

Afraid to end up like the authorities, everyone submits, dropping to their knees slowly but silently.

Loki spreads out his arms, a smile gracing his features, to him, this was the picture of perfection.

"Is not this simpler?" He address them. "Is this not your natural state?"

The trickster moves down the steps, pausing every second or so, locking statements together in a speech that degrades the freedom of man.

"It is the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity, but in the end, you were made to be ruled.

"In the end, you will always kneel." He concludes.

A man, his face worn with age, stands up, unwilling to let the dignity of his people, of his world, be trampled upon. He faces the god's gaze with a stern disposition. "Not to men like you."

Loki smiles at his defiance. "There are no men like me."

The man does not waver. "There are always men like you."

Loki points his scepter at the man, hoping this spectacle will pacify them even further. "Look to your elder, people." The jeweled tip glows intensely. "Let him be an example."

But as the man awaits his death for a noble cause, it never came to him. Instead, he hears the distinctive clang of metal, and the sound of someone falling onto the ground with a dull thud. When he opens his eyes, he sees a man younger than himself dressed in the colors of America. And the man himself, a man from a time when Germany and America were bitter enemies in one instance of that mad scramble for power.

But now, Steve Rogers was no longer the country's enemy. Like the man who gave his life to protect the ideals of his people, he was a hero.

"You know, the last time I was in Germany," He says to the public, who rises with his presence, "And saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."

Loki looks up at him as he gets to his two feet. "The soldier." He laughs as he props himself up with his scepter. "The man out of time."

"I'm not the one who's out of time." From above, the Quinjet, its presence masked by the night, appears, activating a machine gun that is aimed at the trickster

"Loki," Natasha's voice warns, "Drop the weapon and stand down."

He responds with a blast of energy. The aircraft swerves out of the way, and the circular shield of vibranium strikes the god square in the chin, but his blood is able to keep him standing.

Captain America however, is not just any soldier, he is a super soldier, experimented with a serum that pushes the brink of human endurance. He punches Loki, and the latter, offended at being treated so roughly by a lowly human, and strikes him with his scepter. Steve manages to parry the first few attempts before he sent flying back a few feet. He tries to throw his shield again, but Loki just swats it to the ground. He is knocked down, the scepter pointed at his neck not a moment later.

"Kneel."

The Captain pushes the object out the way, jump-kicks Loki in the chest before being flipped onto his back again. He can only withstand so much.

From her place on the Quinjet's pilot seat, Natasha can see they're having more trouble than they anticipated when a voice she's all too familiar with overrides the aircrafts communications systems with AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill"

The source of this hacking soon makes himself known as Tony, in the Mark VI, knocks Loki onto the steps of the square and then reveals his suit's entire arsenal.

"Your move, Reindeer Games." Steve joins him, and with the Quinjet's own weaponry, Loki raises his hands up in a reluctant surrender, his armor fading away.

Stark puts his guard down and his weapons away. "Good move."

And with that, they haul Loki ungracefully away into the Quinjet, unaware that while Loki has submitted himself to S.H.I.E.L.D., his bare palms had sent a signal to a figure in the shadows.

And Steve, though not hitting the bull's-eye, was close when he confides to his dead friend's son the apparent easiness of the god's apprehending.

As Natasha speaks with Fury, she notices the lightning flashing over the horizon. Stuttgart is now behind them as the group returns to the Helicarrier for Loki's incarceration and interrogation.

As they do so, the forests below and behind rustle as a creature slinks in the darkness, the only signal of its presence being two red streaks of luminescence moving swiftly. Its sleek build and jet black hide the perfect camouflage, Nargacuga uses the winds to glide like a phantom, cautious of the accumulating thunderclaps, and bolts of electricity. This was not of Earth's nature, and so he keeps his distance.

A figure lands on the roof of the aircraft, and the wyvern takes notice of his master being carried away, the armored man on their heels, and the soldier with a shield plunging into the forest with nothing but a parachute.

His first victim on the job.

Thor notices the door of the flying machine open, he enters, assaults the man made of metal before he can so much as touch him, and then takes Loki, using Mjolnir to make his getaway and land them on a cliff.

"Where's the Tesseract?" Thor inquires angrily.

Loki, oblivious to the lividness of his former brother, simply laughs. "I miss you too."

"Do I look to be in a gaming mood?"

Loki gets into a sitting position. "You should thank me. With the Bifrost gone, how much energy did the Allfather have to muster to conjure you here? To your precious Earth."

Mjolnir drops from its wielder's grip as the Thunderer grabs his adoptive brother by the shoulders, forces him onto his feet, and looks at him, a bit of his anger fading. Thor was furious when he learned that Midgard was in danger, but upon hearing that it was Loki who was spearheading this mayhem, he left Asgard without a word.

"I thought you dead."

Loki looked bored at that statement, but he was curious to know of his foster home's state after he had fallen in the vacuum of space. "Did you mourn?"

"We all did. Our father-"

Now it was Loki's turn to scowl. He puts up a finger to cut Thor off from whatever he was going to say. " _Your_ father."

He frees himself from his touch. "He told you of my true parentage, did he not?"

"We were raised together." Thor calls from behind him. "We played together, we fought together. Do you remember none of that?" Family is everything to Thor, and his fondest moments were with the man who brought him the greatest pain in his life.

But Loki did not reciprocate that feeling, widening the gap between with the next words he utters. "I remember a shadow." He spat bitterly. "Living in the shade of your greatness. I remember you tossing me into an abyss. I who was, and should be king!"

"So you take the world I love as a recompense for your imagined slights?" Thor is also one who puts his duties above family if need be. "No, the Earth is under my protection Loki."

Loki laughs as if the warning were but a jest. "And you're doing a marvelous job at that. The humans slaughter each other in droves while you idly fret. I mean to rule them, as why should I not?" The younger god reasons.

"You think yourself above them?" Thor asks gravely, dreading the answer he knew was coming.

"Well, yes." The reply was direct, and almost with little regard to its subject.

"Then you miss the truth of ruling brother." Thor says with regretful honesty. "A throne would suit you ill."

Loki pushes the god out of the way, and makes his way back up the mountains while a raven watches the exchange unfold. Even in his slumber, Odin still hopes to see the light in the Jotun prince whose life he spared.

"I've seen worlds you've never known about. I have grown, _Odinson_ ," He says each syllable hatefully, "In my exile. I have seen the true power of the Tesseract, and when I wield-"

Now it was Thor who cuts him off. "Who showed you this power?" He asks. "Who controls the would-be king?"

"I am a king!" He yells.

"Not here!" Thor replies with just as much force. "You give up the Tesseract. You give up this poisonous dream!" He says, and for a while, all is silent.

Thor then tells the rogue god the one thing he desires more than anything. "You come home."

And for a while, Loki feels sympathetic for the man whom he once saw as his brother. The one who always stood up for him, ensured they would have the best of the day's opportunities, the one who smiles for him.

But those days were gone. "I don't have it." He replies with a shake of the head.

Thor calls for Mjolnir, but before he can smite the truth from Loki, the younger god's wits kick in. "You need the Cube to bring me home, but I sent it off, I know not where."

Thor lowers his hammer, and then points a finger at the trickster. "You listen well, brother-"

Whatever he was going to say after that, Loki never found out as the one the petty mortals call the Iron Man charges his brother in a roar of fire.

"I'm listening."

 _ **A few minutes ago,**_

"Said anything?" Fury says from the speaker.

"Not a word." Natasha responds.

"Just get him here. We're low on time." He orders.

As Loki sits with his wrists cuffed, Tony and Steve talk about him.

"I don't like it." The soldier says.

"What? Rock of Ages giving up so easily?"

Steve reasons, "I don't remember it being ever that easy. This guy packs a wallop."

"Still, you are pretty spry for an older fellow." Tony then takes a pause before asking him, "What's your thing, Pilates?"

Steve, not familiar with the last word, responds with a simple "What?"

"It's like calisthenics." The genius explains. "You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capsicle."

Steve then looks at him, still dressed in his armor save for his helmet. "Fury didn't tell me you were coming."

Tony was more familiar with that side of the one-eyed man. "Yeah, there's a lot of things Fury doesn't tell you."

Their conversion was cut short by a loud burst of thunder. Natasha, normally not fazed by anything of Mother Nature's wrath, was somewhat unnerved. "Where's this coming from?"

More thunder overhead, and Loki squirms a bit in his seat.

"What's the matter?" Steve asks, being the first to notice. "Scared of a little lightning."

If only the soldier were in his shoes. "I'm not overly fond of what follows."

Suddenly, the Quinjet shifts as additional weights comes from seemingly nowhere. Hearing heavy footsteps on the roof, Tony and Steve put on their headpieces and attempt to confront the intruder, a muscular man with armor quite similar to Loki's, wielding what appears to be a sledgehammer that flings Tony aside with little more than a swing. He then leaves as quickly as he came.

"Another Asgardian?" Natasha replies but doesn't get up from her seat.

"That guy's a friendly?" Steve asks.

"Doesn't matter. If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract's lost." Stark states from his helmet.

"Stark, we need a plan of attack." Steve reasons with him as he can tell that the inventor is about to do something stupid.

"I have a plan. Attack." And with that, Iron Man flies off.

Cap quickly straps a parachute to himself.

"I'd sit this one out Cap." Natasha advises him.

"I don't see how I can."

"These guys come from legend, they're basically gods." She explains.

But Steve was brought up God-fearing, and responds accordingly. "There's only one God ma'am. And I'm pretty sure he doesn't dress like that."

He grabs his shield, leaps from the hangar, and plunges into a headfirst dive.

You'd think the man had his fill of surprise injuries, but all of a sudden, the sky above him darkens more than usual, and in the next moment, he was gone from his parachute.

Had the thing been up to his knees in height, Steve would brushed off the attempts to go at him, but this animal was about twenty meters alone in length, with an visage and build that brought to mind several nocturnal species like owls, bats, and cats. The beast's wings were short, but its forelegs were muscular, and so was the tail that flicked behind it, creating a clicking sound as it swished from one side to the other.

Steve throws his shield, but the beast was too fast. Its lunges, claw strikes, and tail slams were carried out in the blink of an eye. Steve knows he was in the twenty-first century, but even he can point out an animal like this could not have evolved in just seventy years.

And had he a guide from this beast's native soil, that person would simply laugh at what he was doing against it. The prospect of fighting a wyvern, even one such as Nargacuga, was suicidal, something that wasn't so vague anymore now that the creature shook its tail so hard, large quills that could impale a man embedding themselves in the clearing in which man and beast fought.

But just then, the beast stopped, it looked at Steve with a red-rimmed glare before leaping away from him. The super-soldier presumed the thing had just felt threatened by his means of descent, unable to see in the dark to notice the monster's form shrink.

Tony and Thor crashed into yet another part of the same forest.

"Do not touch me again." Thor tells the man of metal as soon as he finds his feet on the ground.

"Then don't take my stuff." Tony replies.

"You have no idea what you're dealing with."

Tony looks to the ledge where Loki sits, then back at Thor. "Shakespeare in the park?"

He then extends an open hand to Thor, as if he were the lead in a play. "Doth mother know, you weareth her drapes?"

Thor has had enough mockery for one night. "This is beyond you, metal man. Loki will face Asgardian justice."

"Once he gives up the cube, he's all yours. Until then," Tony, then puts his faceplate back on, "Stay out of the way."

He barely gets the word "tourist" out of his mouth when a hammer strikes him and slams him against a tree. Obviously not happy about the way things are going, he decides that if this Thor character wants a piece of Tony Stark, then that's exactly what he'll give him.

Soon, as man and god duke it out, Loki watches with a grin of amusement on his features. The armor was well developed, and even had a nasty surprise in store the moment Thor raises his hammer and uses it as a medium to direct a thunderbolt straight at Tony. The man inside was spared the brunt of the electrocution, but his suit's power capacity readings are at a staggering four hundred percent! Thor's most potent means of attack just became his enemy at that point as Iron Man fires a much larger repulsor blast before meeting Thor in mid-air.

The battle is then taken into the air as they take turns grinding each other against the side of a mountain before bringing the fight back down to the ground, crashing several trees as they do so. As their hands collide, Thor's superhuman strength begins to crush the gauntlet mechanism, and Tony is forced to repulse him yet again. Unfortunately, the blast only pushes Thor, but does not make him lose his grip. Iron Man attempts a headbutt, but then again, Thor proves just who is the stronger of the two, but Tony's brains allow him to fling the god into yet another tree. His patience out the window, the Asgardian avoids a swing from the mortal, grabs the armor, and smashes him down art with a momentum surge. Before he can pound his metallic adversary into submission, Tony's flight boosters kick, and the god finds himself spitting dirt, barely noticing the force crashing onto him. Mjolnir at the ready, he prepares to finish this until a large discus bounces off of his and the metal man's panoplies.

"Hey!" Steve shouts, "That's enough!" He jumps down from the fallen tree he was standing on. He looks at Thor. "Now, I don't know what you plan on doing here."

"I've come to put an end to Loki's schemes." The larger man proclaims.

"Then prove it. Put the hammer done." Steve asks firmly.

"Uh, yeah, no," Tony cracks from the suit. "Bad call. He loves his ham-" That remark sent him rolling into a pile of branches.

"You want me to put the hammer down?" Thor cries out as he leaps into the air, his right arm back, ready to smite the insolent human for his tone.

Instead of hitting bone, the hammer struck vibranium, and the vibrations of Mjolnir were so powerful that they generated a shockwave that cleared a whole area of the woods in a wave of blue light.

Once the three recovered, they looked at each other, a new respect and understanding dawning in their minds. Steve was the first to break the hot ice.

"Are we done here?"

It took a while before everyone could give a reply. Unfortunately, when they did, a glowing pair of yellow lanterns began to dance, and suddenly, the trio had to sidestep to avoid a large, snapping, pink head.

Loki hadn't budged from his spot. He simply squatted down as his strongest slave challenged the collective wrath of that oaf of a prince, the soldier out of time, and that nosy inventor who couldn't stop running his mouth.

"What the hell is that?!" Tony asks Steve as the massive animal takes a chomp out of his gauntlets before releasing as the mighty god charges, hammer poised to smite yet again.

"I am at a loss as you are Stark. Last I was told, dinosaurs were extinct!" Steve shouts as he tries to block the theropod's claws with his shield. "Do you know what this is?!" He then asks of the blonde.

"I am at a loss as you are friend!" Thor's voice booms as the creature's tails spiked tail smacks him in the face. "This is not a manner of beast that I have seen in my entire life on Asgard."

JARVIS' voice also informs his creator that any attempts to match the beast with Earth's fauna were met with less than positive results. "Oh great! Maybe Loki was the kind of person who kept smuggling pets."

Thor hears him "I have told you metal man! This beast is not of our home!" He shouts yet again as the creature erupts into a snorting behemoth with a pillar-shaped head, its red eyes barely visible under all that rocky armor. Normally, Barroth are docile unless disturbed, and the Great Jaggi before it relies on its alpha status in a pack, preferring to bark and howl out commands than get in the line of fire.

But these animals do not have the minds of such; Jake has learned to control these large forms with deadly skill, his Barroth body then begins to smash the other three into the nearby trees like an angry moose. Tony's repulsors and Steve's shield do little to deter it, and Thor, despite his smaller size, was unable to land a hit with Mjolnir on the creature. It was as if the beast was well oriented of their strengths and disadvantages.

Steve then brings up something. "How many monsters live in these woods?"

"Monsters?" Tony asks him before the soldier goes into detail about how he was aggressively ripped from the sky by a black cat with wings bigger than an elephant. Thor's heightened senses allow him to much better perceive the soldier's words, and he had an explanation that was both plausible and yet far-fetched to even Tony Stark's intellect.

"Perhaps this may be the same creature friend, and it would make sense. Where I come from, changing form was an attainable skill."

Steve and Tony glanced at the still sitting god, before the next words of Thor rid them of all suspicion relating to Loki.

"But I sense no magic from this being. It would either be that it was born with the ability…"

"Or maybe I'm not the only out there with crazy ideas." Tony said. Not exactly what Thor had in mind to punctuate the sentence, but it was close as any paraphrase could come. Changing form with science. If he survives the monster onslaught, he would have to research on possible ways of doing so.

As it had done with Steve, the creature suddenly abandoned its violent pursuit of the two, and left for the woods, its footsteps fading into the distance.

Tony hoped that S.H.I.E.L.D., for all their bad history, would allow him to borrow a blowtorch, while Steve just wanted to rest his sore body. Thor, immediately grabbed Loki as the Quinjet finally descends with its hangar door opened.

For all they'd just been through. Steve was right, Loki did give up too easily.

And the reason he had permitted his own capture was so that Selvig could work on the portal's stabilization, while Barton was to begin the next phase of the plan. All the while, Hunter, who had allowed Loki to witness the raw strength of some of Earth's most dangerous men, simply watched from the shadows of leaves and bark as his master moves his pieces to new positions on the game board.


	4. Free For All

**Helicarrier.**

As soldiers lead Loki away, he passes by the diligently working Bruce Banner. Aware of the man's…sickness, the trickster flashes him a malicious smile, causing Bruce to rub the spot between his eyes.

In a large circular glass cell held by hydraulic rigs, Loki watches as Nick Fury pushes a button on the control panel of the cell, revealing a sheer drop below as gusts of wind roar and shriek upon entry.

He closes the trap again, and Loki soon suspects the trap was much too extravagant and foolproof for someone of his caliber. On a side note, he was touched that Fury remembered his analogy of the ant and the boot.

"It's an impressive cage." He notes, "Not built for me, I suppose."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you." Fury affirms.

"Oh I've heard." Loki says as he looks towards the camera, where he knows Banner watches him with intent. While Thor is more to bring the body much suffering, Loki uses words to break the psyche of those who cross him.

"A mindless beast." He pauses to let the words sink in. "Makes play he's still a man." He then looks to Fury with false pity. "How desperate are you? To call upon such lost creatures to your cause?"

Fury glares him with that one eye that could burn the aircraft carrier if it could. "How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war; you steal a force you can't hope to control; you talk about peace, and you kill, because it's fun." Fury lowers his voice a bit, but the anger is very much still evident. "You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

But Loki is unperturbed. "Ooh, it burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have the power, unlimited power. And for what?" He looks back to the camera, Stark is not present, but Loki can sense that he too, finds unease in his words. "A warm light for all mankind to share, only to be reminded what real power is."

Fury smiles, seeing Loki's words as nothing but his bluff. "Well, let me know if real power wants a magazine or something." And with that, he exits, but Loki smirk only grows wider as the door closes and he is left alone to wait out the next stage of his plan.

Meanwhile on the Helicarrier's less than forgiving outer regions, Bnahabra, a bug as large as an eagle, waits patiently. Their body shape and coloring allows them to be virtually unseen. Not usually a monster that can cause much alarm, yet the toxins inside that massive syringe of a stinger can weaken a person's vital signs, homeostatic functions, and overall immunity to airborne diseases.

But the mind and body of the insect was focused on remaining part of the craft's décor until further notice. Come tomorrow, hell would break loose.

Meanwhile, Steve, Thor, Bruce, Natasha, and Agent Hill are all witnesses to Loki and Fury's less than heartwarming reunion.

"He really grows on you doesn't he?" Bruce says sarcastically in an attempt to hide his fear of the man.

Steve takes the liberty to ask Thor of his plans. Loki has amassed an army known as the Chitauri. Not of any of the Nine Realms, Thor guesses he has bargained the Tesseract to their possession once he himself becomes the undisputed ruler of the planet. Steve finds this hard to believe, but he's barely making ends meet, so he decides not to give Fury another excuse to bet some money out from him.

Banner realizes that if the army is situated in the far-out reaches of space, then Loki will need another portal constructed. And with Selvig an acquaintance of Thor, the latter is very disturbed of his unwilling involvement with Loki, and while Steve tries to figure out what's Loki's angle in a holding cell meant for…something else, Bruce dismisses Loki's rants as an act of madness in order to hide his own paranoia regarding that guy.

"Iridium. What do they need the iridum for?" Bruce asks.

"It's a stabilizing agent." Tony confirms as he enters the bridge with Phil in tow. After saying something to the agent regarding keeping love alive, he continues to answer Doctor Banner's question. "It means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D."

He taps Thor's bare arm. "No hard feelings Point Break, you've got a mean swing." Then back to the element at hand. "It also means that the portal can open as long, and stay open as wide as Loki wants." He says as he passes Hill and takes up Fury's usual position on the bridge.

"Uh, raise the mizzenmast, ship the top sails." The agents working the screens look at up him as if to say, _"Who does Stark think he is?"_

Tony then turns to his right. "That man is playing Galaga!" Everyone else turns to the agent caught red-handed. "Thought we wouldn't notice, but we did." Then he tries to see the screens with a hand over his left eye. "How does Fury even see these?"

"He turns." Says Hill.

"Sounds exhausting."

The billionaire turns to the conference table, where everyone is still somewhat at a loss to what he is trying to get at, but of course, said billionaire takes no notice to it.

"The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily." Natasha flinches at the sound of her partner doing some god's dirty work, but no one catches sight of it.

"The only major component he needs, is a power source of high-energy density." Or in layman's terms, "Something to kick-start the cube."

"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Hill asks.

"The packet." She raises an eyebrow. "Selvig's notes. The extraction theory papers. Am I the only who did the reading?" In actuality, Tony and Bruce were the only people in that room that could actually comprehend anything past the title.

"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asks. Bruce, who had been digesting Tony's statements in silence, speaks up for the young billionaire. "He'd have to heat the Cube to a hundred billion Kelvin, just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

"Unless," Tony continues, "Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

"Well if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet." Bruce finished as Tony shakes his hand. It was one thing to hear of the man's achievements, but Bruce Banner respected Tony Stark's contributions to the world of science and technology.

And it seems that Stark feels the same about him. "Pleasure to meet you Dr. Banner. Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled and I am a huge fan of the way you turn into a hideous, green, rage monster." He said the last part as if questioning his description of the Hulk. With Tony Stark, anything below perfect is nothing, even snarky side-comments.

"Uh…thanks." And the moment is gone.

"Doctor Banner is only here to track the Cube." Fury clarifies. "I was hoping you might join him." In any situation, two is always better than one.

"Let's start with that stick of his. It might be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." Steve states.

"I don't know about that, but it is powered by the Cube, and I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

Having only recently developed an interest in the finer points of Midgard's life, Thor did not grow up knowing about the Wizard of Oz. Even Steve was lucky enough to know the story, so, in hindsight, there may not be much reason to state out loud that he understood Fury's reference. The soldier was too proud of himself to notice the eye roll from the billionaire though.

"Shall we play doctor?" Tony asks of Bruce, who replies in kind. Once the science bros leave the bridge, the man ratted out resumed playing his games, confident that he wouldn't get caught a second time. So confident that he even puts it on speaker.

As they look at charts, monitor certain readings, calculate algorithms and recalibrating them if need be, Tony and Bruce get to know more about each other. Their intellectual superior minds allow them to sympathize with each other, Tony even offers Bruce permanent residence in Stark Tower, trying to convince him with the prospect of a stress-free environment before agitating Bruce with a shock prod.

"Hey!" Steve shouts, having seen it happen. Tony ignores him and instead scans Bruce's irises for any sign of green.

"Are you nuts?" The soldiers asks in an annoyed tone.

"Jury's out." He turns back to Banner, asking him about how he keeps the Hulk capped up.

Steve does not like how Howard's son is acting. "Is everything a joke to you?"

"Funny things are." Tony replies while pointing with the shock prod.

"Threatening the safety of everyone on board this ship isn't funny." Steve says before adding, "No offense Doctor."

"That's alright," Bruce assure him, "I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

"You're tiptoeing big man. You need to strut." Tony suggests.

"And you need to focus on the problem Mr. Stark." Steve tells him.

"You think I'm not. Why did Fury call us? Why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us?" He pulls out a bag of blueberries. "I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

"You think Fury's hiding something?" Steve says.

"He's a spy Captain. He's _the spy_. His secrets have secrets." Tony points at Bruce. "It's bugging him too isn't it?"

Bruce, uncomfortable about the pressing look Steve gave him, tries to excuse himself, but Steve's doesn't cut him any slack.

"'A warm for all mankind.' Loki's jab at Fury about the Cube." He turns to Tony. "I think that was meant for you. Even if Barton didn't tell Loki about the tower, it was still over the news."

"The Stark Tower?" Steve says to confirm what Banner just said. "That big ugly-" Tony gives him a look, "-building in New York?"

Banner continues. "It's powered by an arc reactor. A self-sustaining energy source. That thing will run itself for what, a year."

"It's just a prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy now."

Banner, still referring to Tony, then points out as to why Tony was never involved, or even suggested for the Tesseract project. "I mean, what are they doing in the energy in the first place?"

"I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s security files."

"I'm sorry did you say-"

"J.A.R.V.I.S. had it running since I hit the bridge. In a few hours I'll know every dirty secret SHIELD's ever tried to hide." He then moves the blueberries towards Steve, offering him one. The soldier doesn't even take a whiff.

"Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?" Steve knows that Tony's strained relationship with the organization was because he often had a habit of sticking his nose where it doesn't belong. Right now is one very example of that undesired trait.

"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?" Tony says. "Historically, not possible."

Steve then tries to get some of that sense of duty into the billionaire. "I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them."

"Following's not really my style." Tony states.

"And you're all about style aren't you." The Captain replies back, annoyed at the billionaire's tone.

"Of the people in this room, which one is: A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?"

Bruce then tries to be the less hurtful side of reason. "Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you."

Knowing he can't win with these kinds of people, he simply exits the lab. "Just find the Cube." He says on the way out, trying not to look bothered by the words of the geniuses. Their concern is valid, but no matter how hard he tries to shake off his own suspicions, he decides that maybe it's also time for a little snooping of his own.

Staring at his own retreating form, Tony looks back to a random monitor. "That's the guy my dad never shut up about? I wonder if they should've kept him on ice."

Bruce was trying his best to be on neutral ground. "The guy's not wrong about Loki though. He does have the jump on us."

"What he's got," Tony states, "Is an ACME dynamite. It's going to blow up in his face, and I'm going to be there when it does."

Bruce laughs. "And I'll read all about it."

"Uh-huh, or, you'll be suiting up with the rest of us."

"You see," Banner reasons, "I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed," he says, "Like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

Tony can relate. "You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to claw its way into my heart. This," he points to his arc reactor, "Stops it. This little circle of light. It's a part of me now. Not just armor, it's a terrible privilege."

Bruce however, notes one major difference between them. "But you can control it."

"Because I've learned how."

"It's different." The physicist insists before returning to the computer screen, only for Tony to flip it out of the way.

"Hey, I've read all about your little incident. That much gamma exposure, should've killed you."

Bruce takes that fact in. "So you're saying that the Hulk…the other guy, saved my life?" The inventor remains silent, and he gets the message.

"That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

"I guess we'll find out." Tony says as the scientist resume their Tesseract hunt, unaware that as they do so, Steve has just climbed up a railing where some suspicious metal crates are kept in storage and that Selvig is on his way to the invasion site, the iridium-loaded CMS ready.

But not all news is bad. Thor can rest easy knowing that S.H.I.E.L.D. relocated Jane Foster to safer ground. He cannot express his gratitude towards the Son of Coul for his efforts.

Coulson on the other hand, also expresses his thanks. Thor's presence on Earth was one that changed how things run, but the Asgardian insists that his absence would have been more beneficial, seeing that his race were delusional warmongers who possessed something akin to a god-complex. He likens it to the antlered monsters known as bilgesnipe, which the Thunderer later learns is not endemic to the planet.

This discussion of scaly, carnivorous beasts brings him back just a few hours ago, to the anonymous shapeshifter Loki no doubt employed to attack them, but for what purpose? Even with his back turned, Loki did not make the slightest attempt at an escape. Rather, he did seem to admit defeat with ease.

Loki's moniker and background makes his presence onboard this flying ship rather daunting.

His lamentations of recent events make him unable to answer Nick Fury's questions regarding the man whom he could call brother with a smile.

 **Detention Section. The Hulk's Cell. Nighttime.**

Loki stops pacing. "There's not many people who can sneak up on me."

But Natasha Romanoff, for all her Russian brand of stealthiness, correctly guesses that Loki had anticipated her arrival.

"After." Loki emphasizes the word. "After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm, and I would cooperate."

Natasha was sent here to rat out his intentions, but she has her own agenda. "I want to know what you've done to Agent Barton."

Loki smiled at the man's name. "I'd say that I have expanded his mind."

"And once you've won, once you're king of the mountain," The redhead crosses her arms, "What happens to his mind?"

Loki smiles. "Is this love Agent Romanoff?"

"Love is for children. I owe him a debt." She had given up on that hope when she'd learned that Clint was a married man, his family isolated to keep them safe.

There were no seats, but Loki would get his throne soon enough, so he makes do with the floor. "Tell me."

Natasha pulls up a chair just near the control panel, and begins to open up the trickster about her life before S.H.I.E.L.D. She'd been known as Natalia Romanova, an agent loyal to the Soviet agency known as the KGB. Her ruthlessness caught S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attention, and Fury saw that only Barton can handle her from a safe distance, but instead of killing her like he was ordered to, he instead convinced her to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. and she felt she owed him for that turnaround in her life.

Once she was done, Loki than began to bargain with her for one man's safety.

"It's not that complicated." She states. "I got red in my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."

"Can you really?" Loki says with a dangerous edge to his voice. "Can you wipe that much red?" He is on his feet now, enjoying the pleasure of seeing Natasha recount the many crimes she has done in the past as he lists them off one by one. "Barton told me everything. Your ledger is dripping; it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything? This is the basest sentimentality. This is a child at prayer. Pathetic!" He spat.

He goes on, his face darkening. "You lie and kill. In the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors, but they are a part of you, and they will never go away!" As he rants off to Natasha, Tony's decryption program finds a file of particular interest, Steve scowls as he sees the horrors of his past stowed away in metal crates, and outside, Bnahabra shapeshifts for a short while into Gigginox as the creature's thermal organs pick up two beings unaware of his presence before turning back into the insect and scaling the Helicarrier until he is at the top. That is when the man inside the beast feels his master's fist pound against the glass of his container.

"I won't touch Barton, not until I let him kill you. Slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear, and when he's done, he'll wake long enough just to see his good work, and when he screams, I'll split his skull. This is my bargain you mewling quim."

Every word that came was hateful, and Natasha, the stoic spy, was driven to turn the other way. "You're a monster." She mutters.

Loki laughs and commits his biggest mistake, and for a calculating individual, it was tactless. "No, you brought the monster."

And Natasha drops her act. "So, Banner. That's your play."

As she exits, she alerts the bridge of Loki's plan, and soon, Thor and Fury rush into the lab in order to make sure anything that could set off the physicist's less appealing side.

"Thank you for your cooperation." She replies to a dumbfounded trickster as she exists the room.

Meanwhile, back at the lab,

Nick Fury knows all in the Helicarrier, so when an agent notifies him of a foreign program snooping around, digging up some very sensitive information, he immediately to the first person he suspects is responsible.

When he arrives, Tony smartly replies that the Tesseract's energy signature is being locked onto before some very interesting snippets of information pop up on a screen.

"What is Phase Two?"

The answer slams down onto the table in the form of an assault rifle fitted with HYDRA technology. Sometimes, it can't hurt to try the classic ways of snooping around. "Phase Two is S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the Cube to make weapons." Steve explains while glaring at Fury.

Fury attempts to either explain, or cover up his tracks, but he is reduced to a man whose mind is a blubbering wreck as Tony opens up the files containing weapons designs of similar form, trying not to show the displeasure on his face that Steve, a man who knew nothing about the workings of a cellphone, could beat a machine.

"I was wrong Director. The world hasn't changed a bit." The disappointment in the First Avenger's voice burned Fury on the inside.

Meanwhile, Bruce focuses his outrage at the fact that Natasha has also kept Phase Two a secret from him. It all slides into place. For all his personality faults, Tony Stark would never be caught dead working to engineer weapons, not at present at least.

"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment Doctor?"

"I was in Calcutta. I was pretty well removed." He states with heavy sarcasm.

"Loki's manipulating you."

"And you've been doing what exactly?"

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you."

"And I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy." Bruce says. "I'd like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to create weapons of mass destruction."

The cat's out of the bag. "Because of him." Fury points at the largest person in the room, who was also the last to arrive.

"Me?" Thor asks incredulously.

Fury goes into details of Thor's battle against the Destroyer. "Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned."

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet!" Thor reasons.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you? And, you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, they can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the Cube?"

"Your work with Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies. It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war." Thor states.

"A higher form?" Steve asks uneasily.

"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something."

Tony realizes his moment in silence is up. "Nuclear deterrent, because that always calms everything right down."

"Remind me again how you made your fortune Stark?" In hindsight, maybe Fury shouldn't have gone that far.

"I'm pretty sure if he made weapons, Stark would neck deep-"

For once, Tony didn't like his name being put in a sentence. "Hold, on how is this about me?"

"I'm sorry." Steve says, finally losing his patience with the billionaire's attitude. "Isn't everything?"

"I thought humans were more evolved than this?"

"Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?"

"Do you treat your champions with such mistrust?"

"They are not my champions!"

"Are you boys really that naïve? S.H.I.E.L.D. monitors potential threats"

"Captain America is on threat watch?"

"We all are."

"You're on that list. Are you above or below angry bees?"

"Stark, so help me God, if you make one more crack about-"

"Verbal threat! I feel threatened."

"Show this man some respect."

"Respect? He smashed Harlem."

As they conjure up a storm of mistrust and chaos with their bickering, no one notices the gem on Loki's scepter glow more intensely, or the Gigginox's bulbous form as it moved across the Helicarrier's large berth.

Meanwhile, a lone carrier reaches the craft's airspace.

"661 Bravo. Please relay your pass code. What is your hull over?"

"Arms to ammunition. Over." Hawkeye relays as his men suit up to bust Loki out.

And in the Helicarrier, the individuals consisting of Fury and five of the most dangerous people on the planet at present are now flaring with tension. Even without his scepter on the hands, Loki is concocting quite a formula for disaster.

"You speak of control, and yet you court chaos." Thor says with a cold smile to Fury.

"That's his M.O. isn't it?" Bruce asks. "I mean what are we, a team. No. We're a chemical mixture that creates chaos. We're…we're a time bomb."

"You." Fury demands. "Need to step away."

"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" Tony asks as he casually puts an arm around Steve, who only pushes it away.

"You know damn well why. Back off!"

"Well, I'm starting to want you to make me."

The two men are now staring each other down. Steve now doubting that, IQ aside, this is the man who claims to be Howard's son, while Tony himself is also wondering if this really the guy that gets his dad's mouth running nonstop.

"Yeah, big man in a suit of armor." Steve says as he walks to the other side of Tony. "Take that away and what are you?"

Tony pauses for a while before he responds. "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

Natasha simply flicks her head, conceding to that fact, but Steve doesn't back down.

"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. And I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the one to make the sacrifice play. To lie down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."

"I think I would just cut the wire."

Steve gives his own cold smile. "Always a way out. You know you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero?"

"A hero, like you?" Tony asks. "You're a lab experiment Rogers. Everything special out of you came out of a bottle?" He spat back.

The conflict is now very thick in the room, and outside an arrow has just lodged itself a hundred feet from Engine Three.

Steve puffs his chest out. "Put on the suit, let's go a few rounds." Tony doesn't move.

Thor laughs "You humans are so petty, and tiny." Tony then rubs his head in frustration and then moves himself away from Steve before he does something he's going to regret.

Banner laughs. "Yeah, this is a team."

"Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner to his-"

"Where? You rented my room."

"The cell was just in case-"

"You needed to kill me but you can't. I know. I've tried." He then tells them how he'd gone to Antarctica and tried to commit suicide via a bullet to the mouth. The other guy couldn't stay quiet though, and spat out the shell.

"So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good, until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk." He rounds on Agent Romanoff and was about to reveal to her the secret of how he remains calm when Fury tells him to just put down the scepter. At the same time, the computer beeps out a finding.

And then, a new series of arguments break out, but before they could even escalate, Bruce notices a disturbing fact about the Tesseract at about the same time Barton pulls the trigger, and the explosive on the arrowhead explodes. Everyone is thrown in different directions as Steve and Tony rush off to confront whoever just tried to kill them…again.

Meanwhile, Agent Hill, as deputy director, tries her best to quell the chaos. The man playing Galaga finally has a good excuse to stop his game as he pulls up the schematics of the damaged aircraft.

"Turbine's loose. Mostly intact, but it's impossible to make repairs while we're still up in the air."

"Somebody's gotta get outside and patch that engine."

"Stark do you copy that?!"

"I'm on it!" Tony says as he fetches his Mark VI, and meets up with Steve at Engine Three.

Fury puts Coulson on lockdown duty. Meanwhile, he makes his way to the bridge to try and do what his position as director entails.

On a lower area, things are not going so well. Natasha has her leg pinned down as she tries to quell Bruce, whose fists are clenched and his eyes and skin beginning to shift to a dark green.

"You've got to fight it. This is just what Loki wants. We're going to be okay, just listen to me." As two armed agents approach in their direction, she motions for them to move out of the way.

Banner continues to suppress the rage, but he's fighting a losing battle. Natasha notices this and becomes increasingly desperate.

"We're going to be okay." She says somewhat forcefully. "I swear on my life that I will get you out of this, and you will walk away, and never, ever-"

"YOUR LIFE?!" Banner says with a bitter amusement to his voice. As his body begins to grow in size, Natasha knows it's too late. The green, unbridled rage of the Hulk begins to show, with the Black Widow looking on in sheer horror at the monstrosity before her. With the primal roar breaking her from her frozen state of shock, she heads up the stairs and crawls under a maze of pipes, narrowly the Hulk's wrath as he tries to smash every nook and cranny to get to her. She tries to hold him off with a liquid nitrogen tank, but this giant was not so easily deterred. It even swatted some men trying to shoot at it and pursued Natasha like a tank. With her injured leg, she is easily swatted aside like a ragdoll.

This does not go unheard by Loki, who smiles at how effortless it was to turn this battleship into a battleground.

And the Hulk wasn't the only big thing on the Helicarrier. As Steve calls for Tony on the portside of the ship, he sees a large chunk of it has been blown off. Tony meanwhile pulls up a hologram of the engine, and assesses the damage. The super conducting cooling system is down, and the rotors are jammed with debris from the explosion.

Tony points to a box on the other side of the broken railing. "I need you to get to that control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position."

Steve obliges, but the lights and buttons inside are beyond his capabilities. Tony just realizes he's got his work cut out for him when a large green shape suddenly plucks Steve from the open panel. The super soldier had just been snatched by what looked like a flying pterodactyl. The Qurupeco then flings Steve to the landing pad of the battleship. Iron Man, unwilling to use waste any ammunition on a giant bird-thing, simply shoots repulsor blasts at the Bird Wyvern, but it only proceeds to trash Steve around like a chicken would a worm. Tony then resorts to punching the thing in the face before grabbing Steve and taking him back to the control panel. A huge trumpeting bellow resonates as Qurupeco now targets Iron Man by spitting a mucus at his helmet. All goes fuzzy for a moment as an explosion racks the suit.

Steve then grabs onto the thing's neck and proceeds to ride it like a bucking bronco. "Stark! Hurry up in there!"

Natasha's brutal training in her younger years has allowed to her face every single breed of danger with a stoic face. But Loki's darkness and the Hulk's brutality were things the likes of which she was never exposed to, so as the Hulk looms over her, ready to squish her like a spider, Thor tackles the green giant into the aircraft port, where the sight of both non-humans sends everyone packing. They duke it out, but Thor's Asgardian heritage allows him to match the Hulk's strength.

He had seen the transformation well enough to know that it was beyond Banner's control. He tries to reason with the Hulk, but is simply lifted and thrown into some supply crates. Thor, normally immune to most of Earth's weaponry, realizes that, as he wipes a bit of blood from his nose, he will need more than his fists to bring Bruce back to his senses.

As he is charged again, Thor's hammer uppercuts the brute into a fighter jet, and Hulk catches the thrown projectile, only to be pinned by it. The hammer's enchantment makes him unable to lift it, and his distraction gives Thor ample time to kick him aside and ascend his back. Unfortunately for them, the roars of the Hulk are a beacon to something else.

Normally, Qurupeco are creatures that use their vocal sacs to use larger monsters as fodder to potential threats, but Hunter's mind races with the instinct to fight and kill, so even though Banner is instrumental in his master's escape, he is disposable, and so Qurupeco flings the suddenly insignificant Captain America into some rogue agents and heads down to the aircraft port, meeting Hulk with an inflated vocal sac, releasing the air and sound in one earsplitting scream.

But Qurupeco would not be fighting Hulk, instead, he turns into a lemon scaled monster with a spongy neck, and spits a glob of water onto the ground, using it to slide across to the green monstrosity and pry off the son of Odin. Hulk, not liking the Royal Ludroth giving him the stink-eye, tries to smack him, but the creature's mane proves quite the shock absorber, and soon, a glob of water is soon splashed in his face, and another at his feet. When the Hulk tries to grab him, he slips, shaking the room. Thor, meanwhile, tries his own effort to bludgeon the beast, but the Ludroth simply sweeps its tail and then lunges at the god, only to slide away as the Hulk brings down his fist on the wrong target. Thor simply shrugs it off as the Leviathan turns to the two bipedal beings in the room, its shimmering scales giving way to more menacing ones of a wintry color.

A Barioth is far swifter than a Ludroth, and Thor can barely keep up as the wyvern leaps swiftly, dodging his and the Hulk's assaults with graceful, catlike ease. It then goes for the larger of the two, sabers held at bay by the Hulk's own meaty fists, but the Barioth's scales are abrasive, and the green giant finds it rather difficult to hold it down for long. Chain attacks consisting of tail and claw swipes were also present, and soon, after a rather nasty attack involving an icy twister, Thor realizes that neither he nor Banner's more combative form can handle this onslaught for long. The feral, cat-like profile, held a look Thor had seen from his home. It is the same expression most felines and their kin sport when playing with their prey.

But for Hunter, the games have not yet ended, and the Hulk meets what could be his animal counterpart. Its pickle-like body bulging red, Deviljho's jaws meet the Hulk's fists, and the animal snaps, hoping to crush that little green head. But the Hulk grows stronger with his rising anger, in his simple mind, this lizard was about to become one very smashed up wallet.

Meanwhile, with Steve and Tony, the former waits by a red lever, while the latter goes in to get the turbine rotors running with a push. Meanwhile, at the bridge, Hawkeye's arrows have caused another engine failure, and Fury, master of the obvious, states it to Stark.

But Steve was not without his own problems. He was nearly knocked off the craft thanks to the agents he'd been holding off. And as Engine Three goes back online, Tony is still stuck in the nest of spinning blades.

"Cap, hit the lever!"

"I need a minute here!" Steve says while dangling.

He doesn't have a minute, and the panic in Tony's voice is evident as he is suddenly thrown against one of the blades, and his armor is soon being scratched in circles.

Thankfully, Steve manages to pull the lever, and reverse the polarity long enough to disengage mag-lev. In layman's terms, Tony was able to get out of there intact and save Steve from another agent about to shoot him.

Finally, after all that, the suits shuts down.

With Hulk and Thor, well, Maria Hill correctly guesses that the Hulk, along with his new friend Deviljho the Pickle Dinosaur, would tear the Helicarrier apart. So one brave (and very foolish) soul was to engage the two of them with nothing but the fighter plane he was piloting.

His last words: "Target angry! Target ANGRY!"

The Hulk leapt at him like a rabbit, and the Deviljho, now a crimson Rathalos, followed suit. The Hulk proceeded to dismantle the plane, and throw the pilot off before the craft explodes from his handiwork. Rathalos meanwhile, settles on the pilot's parachute and, mistaking it for a giant floating octopus, sets it on fire.

The King of the Skies however, was far from finished. Others were sent out to deal with him, and met fiery ends as well. Thankfully, one plane, positioned between the wyvern and the landing pad, sent a missile the winged menace's way, and Rathalos was downed and slammed onto the ground, turning back into a human. Not only that, Hunter's connection to Loki had been severed.

But Loki would no longer have any need of him. He's served his purpose. Let the survivors of his work deal with him. Right now, he must escape.

Thor, upon seeing his brother released from his cell, charges in to stop him, but all he passes through is a form of magic. No substance.

"Are you ever not going to fall for that?" Loki deadpans as he slides the door shut.

Meanwhile, Phil Coulson, armed with a very familiar-looking gun, arrives. "Move away please."

It might seem the agent might have had pulled a one-up on Loki, but unfortunately, magic is quite versatile, and so, as Loki raises his hands up in surrender, another appears behind Phil to stab him in the chest with a dagger.

Thor can only watch in defeat as Loki proceeds to release the cell and send him plummeting into the sea. What the trickster didn't know however, is that the man he once called brother had managed to escape at the very last minute, ruining a perfectly good flower field in the landing.

As the chute closes, Phil utters his dying words to Loki. "You're going to lose." And that stops Loki in his tracks.

"It's in your nature." He continues.

Loki gives him a look of doubt. "Your heroes are scattered, your floating fortress falls from the sky. Where is my disadvantage?"

Coulson only continues to stare at him. "You lack conviction."

Loki considers this for a minute, but barely has time to get his voice out when the technology of the Destroyer sends him flying into a why.

By the time Fury arrives, it's too late. Coulson is down, and everyone gets word of it.

But for one brave soul lost, another comes back. Agent Romanoff had managed to ambush Hawkeye, and despite the latter putting up quite a good fight against his teammate, Natasha's luck turns for the better when she slams him into a railing.

He looks up at her, groaning and bewildered. "Natasha."

Not willing to take any chances, she coldcocks him.


	5. Assemble All the Monsters

_My name is Jacob Lioleus Hunter._

 _During the first years of my life, the days were uneventful. I was your, normal, average kid. With a not-so-ordinary gift._

 _Most four year olds would want pop-up or picture books, or something they just want to smudge their crayons against. Me? I wanted to learn about animals. Not just the basics, but everything there was to know about them. Soon, I knew more than just the life cycles of frogs of butterflies, and had a pretty basic understanding of Greek and Latin thanks to memorizing over a million scientific names._

 _But that was Mom's contribution to my genius. Dad taught me the marvels of working with machines and how the laws of physics can create wonders beyond our imagination. He tells me that laws are much freeing than a world of chaos, where society is unstable and unbridled. He taught me how to fix a car, and soon, people came to me, whether it was to get their bikes fixed or their homework done._

 _School was a breeze, as you can imagine. At the age of sixteen, no longer was I bound by the curriculum of the educational system. Having graduated with degrees in both physics and biology, I was ready to fulfill my goal of following in my dad's footsteps._

 _But just as we went home to prepare for the post-graduation celebration, my life took a downhill turn as my neighborhood was rattled by an explosion. Everyone was startled by it, but imagine my reaction when I realized the source was from my house._

 _There was not a clearer memory in my mind than seeing my parents dead on our floor. Most of our stuff had gone up in flames, and on what was left of the roof was…_

 _Not quite clear to me, but it was an insect. One the size of an elephant, and that was without its wings, which bore colorful markings in the three primary colors. Once it saw me, it took me in its legs, and I barely got the chance to shout out to my parents when a particularly large piece of debris fell on them, and the worst part of it was that I didn't look away in time._

 _The memory of it was still enough to jolt me awake and break down after a few beats._

 _The creature dropped me into the ocean, where all I saw was but a green light before losing awareness of my surroundings._

 _When I came back around, I remember the most pristine and breathtaking beach, right in front of me before sandy footsteps came and lifted me by my arms. I woke up in what appeared to be a tent, where I was being served some medicine by a human, or at least that was what my addled mind told me before her pointed ears woke me up with a start and onto my feet. She simply grabbed my shoulders and set me down firmly on the bed again, uttering in a language that was lost to me._

 _Well, the first few sentences anyways. When she spoke, and I got the words and the message conveyed, I queried her that if she had switched to English. Somehow, she still didn't understand me, and a much older woman appeared. Ancient looking, she carried a medicinal staff like one of those indigenous tribes. Much to my relief, she was able to speak to me without difficulty, and told me that the Elder would like a word with me once I am well again._

 _On the day I would meet him though, the village was attacked. A pack of theropods are ravaging the keep and scaring the livestock, which were no less strange and dinosaur-like that the unwelcomed menaces. The biggest of them, with a mane of white on its neck, howled into the sky, and their forces multiplied. It was all so sudden, but when one of them had a child cornered and was about to carry it off, all of a sudden, my body shifted and bubbled, and soon, my perspective of the world changed a bit. The last thing I remember was a throbbing in my head before I passed out and woke up on a cot again with the same woman tending to my wounds, a scowl on her face. She did not say anything though._

 _A man appeared from the doorway, he was bare save for a loincloth and a green mantle draped over his shoulders. He took a pipe from his lips and blew the smoke into my face, then spoke,_

" _So, it looks like we have yet another visitor eh? And would you look at that!" He says while pointing to my face. "It was like the time when the title Village Chief was but a reservation for me. They even have the same face, the same brown eyes, even the same look on their faces."_

 _I had no idea what he was talking about, until of course he directed his first question to me._

" _Tell me young one, what do you know of Christopher Kurga Hunter?"_

 _Dad's name. Dad's been here._

" _How do you know my father?" I asked, my shock clouded by my daze and the pain in my limbs. The healer woman huffed, but her eyes told me she just as surprised as the elder, ._

" _My dear boy…" And with that, he told me about a part of my dad's life he hadn't even disclosed to me._

 _It turns out that this place, or rather this planet, Minegarde, was a remote place in the universe where very few dare to visit. The reason for this was because of those who decided to call this place home._

 _The biggest animal on Earth is the blue whale, and it is a filter feeder, but here, some of the local wildlife, or most, have taken the liberty of growing to monstrous proportions, most of these being predators, and that is not all that is strange with this land._

 _A long time ago, the creatures here began to disappear as well, entering strange anomalies in the dimensions that led them to what I presume, based from medieval culture and bestiaries, to the Middle Ages. They appeared on various continents, and with their highly evolved physiologies, they were able to ascend to a god-like status that some were revered, while others were hunted on the delusions that their body parts contain various healing properties._

 _But Minegarde remained fairly undisturbed by knights in shining armor, and were more equipped to deal with monsters that breathe fire or generate electricity. In fact, it became a form of occupation. Hunters, as they are called, are often the reasons why most of Minegarde territory is quite prosperous. They accept a wide variety of job offers, known as quests, whether it be to gather supplies from the wilderness or slay monsters, they are up for it. But of course, there is a system to it, and like all other systems, is far too lengthy to discuss in one chapter alone._

 _Anyways, my dad spent fourteen years here, studying the culture and wildlife. It was the idea of dimensional rips though, that prompted him to seek out one particular of Minegarde's more inhospitable locations._

 _The Sacred Land._

 _It was a place where very few have entered, and none have returned. The power sealed inside of it was too much, a conclusion my dad reached when he saw the power firsthand. A wall was built under his lead, and soon, the Tri-Gate stands to discourage the proud and the foolish from the terror behind._

 _But my father, for all his genius, made mistakes. The first one was harnessing the energy of the Sacred Land. A gemstone, called the Jade Pearl, possesses a power that is the origin of Minegarde's time rips. Seeing a way home, Dad sought out to collect as much materials and resources as he could to construct another device that would allow him to return home. But that was not his sole major accomplishment in the alien world._

 _Intrigued by the fauna, he opted to take their genetic codes with for research, and stole away with a batch of microscopic robots small than even a human's blood cells. Once back on Earth, he retired from public life, and opted to work on the bots in the silence of a simple household life, turning them into than a Noah's Ark. It was not until he met a woman, Leah that he reentered the world of biology, and his inventions and memories of Minegarde were buried underneath a much greater treasure._

 _But now, I am here, for some reason or another, listening to that part of life he'd kept a secret from Mom and me. Was it because we might have thought him crazy? Or did he think that the greatest find of all history was going to compromise our safety._

 _Whatever he did, he failed. I remember sneaking downstairs into the basement, where he had a small lab, and finding those little robots inside of a medicine bottle. Much to my misfortune, the container was a syrup I had to take every day, and let's just say that on one particular day, I was on a rush and didn't watch the bottle I had pulled out._

 _Putting the memory and the raptor attack from earlier, with the Elder's tale, and I wondered if my sudden transformation into a monster had something to do with the DNA robots._

" _Your father was a great man." The Elder says. "He must have thought it sound to keep our existence a secret not just to you, but the whole world."_

" _He is dead." I say simply._

" _Dead? What do you mean child?" The Elder asks. I then explain to him about what I had seen, what had not been a dream. My parents died, and some kind of insect was responsible for it._

" _I do not recall any records of such a beast, so it was not from our world."_

 _My question then lean towards a particular object of noteworthy mention. "This Jade Pearl, is it still in the Sacred Land?"_

" _The wall that holds it was built to discourage hunters, but monsters haven't set foot in that valley since the dawn of time." He then lowers his voice. "They are sounder of mind than we are."_

" _This gate, does it have a key?"_

 _The elder takes a deep breath. "If I wasn't as old as I am at present, I would not hesitate to chide you for your suicidal tendencies. There is only one way to get that gate open, and it's near impossible."_

 _But I was adamant. And so that is why I stood at the mouth of a cave situated near the ocean, where tremors frequent._

 _What happened beneath the underwater ruins would be for another time, but I got my first necessity. The next one however, was found near the city of Loc Lac, and that was in a vast desert, miles from the ocean._

 _The locals are there are setting up their annual guild request of a Jhen Mohran hunt. The Jhen Mohran was a whale-like dragon that swims through the sands. Rare ore can be mined upon from their backs, and it's that very mineral that I'm after._

 _To cut this explanation short, we got the ore, and with the first material, we were ready for the Sacred Land._

 _The gate's schematics were very creative, a trademark of Dad's. Apparently the ore from Jhen Mohran's back was to be embedded in the center. The other required material, a Deep Dragongem, contains a mysterious center that, when placed with the ore, can release an energy pulse that can force the gate open._

 _After all the hell that I was put through, I was just happy that home was a gemstone away. If I can harness the energy again, I can use it to generate a portal back to Earth._

 _And then I remember his voice. A voice that was more confident than mine, the spokesperson for my inventions. One of few people who knew what it was like to be different._

 _I could never forget his proclamation that he takes full credit for my parents' untimely but very deserving demise. He rants about how Dad ruined his and his mom's life, and while I wasn't very warm to Dad ever since he'd been keeping Minegarde a secret from me, I realized that I still love him._

 _I made the call. I did what I had to do._

"…"

Fury, Tony, Steve, and Agent Hill all turned to the boy after he'd finished his story, and the first two were able to piece together the identity of his father. Steve holds some bloodied cards. The ones he'd _promised Phil_ he'd autograph.

Christopher Kurga Hunter was a scientist well known for his research on physics, specifically space and the dimensions. When he disappeared for fourteen years, he had designed what was to be a portal between worlds.

And his invention was a success. It wasn't long before SHIELD investigated his disappearance and found the diagram for the portal, and with Loki's recent appearance, the invention's blueprints were now being used by Doctor Selvig to open a gateway from who-knows-where to the humble little planet of Earth.

"Do you realize that your father's greatest work is now being used by a psychotic madman who just used you as a footstool?" Fury asks him, trying not to lose control over his voice. The kid had killed several agents under Loki's control, but Fury tries not to look at the person physically responsible for that.

"Sir, if there's any way I can amend for my mistakes, then by all means, I'm all the way with it." Hunter says quietly, his yellow eyes flashing at the very memory of him being played for a pawn.

Fury averts his gaze for a while. Loki had played them all for a bunch of saps, so if he wants this to work, he was going to have to let go of a lot of negative vibes.

"Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract. I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier." Fury admits.

"There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative. The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more. See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea, in heroes."

He looks at the kid. "Are you up for it?"

Steve looks at Jake, trying to not bring up the uneasy feeling those eyes brought on him. "This is more than just revenge kid. This about saving the world. We need to know for sure you know what you're up against and what you're about to accept."

Tony then reasons with the super soldier. "Rogers, he's been with Loki, he probably knows more about how deep we're in than we know. He has just as much reason as we have to be rightly pissed off at ol' Voldemort. Fury, what's you call?" The billionaires was surprised as the director and soldier at how easily he resigns judgment to them.

In the end both sides agreed to have the boy on the team. Tony clapped his hands together and began the induction. "You got a name kid?"

Hunter didn't know what he meant by it. "I mean a moniker, codename, something that you don't write on a test paper."

Hunter looked at him, his expression unreadable. "Monster Hunter."

 **Helicarrier Medical Room. Daytime.**

As Barton is strapped down, fighting off the last of Loki's mind control, Natasha watches him.

"Clint, you're going to be alright." She assures.

"You know that? Is that what you know? I got…" He pauses. "I gotta go in though, I gotta get in though. Gotta flush him out."

"We don't have that long. It's going to take time."

"I don't understand." More struggling. "Have you ever had someone take your brain and play, pull you out and send someone else in? Do you know what it's like to be unmade?"

Loki's words ring back to her. "You know that I do." She answers.

He looks at her. "Why am I back, how did you get him out?"

"Cognitive recalibration." Clint looks at her blankly. "I hit you on the head really hard." She explains.

"Thanks." He tells her as she unfastens him, allowing to sit up.

"Tasha, how many agents-"

"Don't, don't do that to yourself Clint." She squeezes his shoulder.

"That kid. That kid. The one who can turn into monsters is he-"

"He's fine. Fury taking care of him. Don't worry. Just try not to beat yourself up for something beyond your control. This is…Loki." She pauses. "This is monsters, and magic, and…nothing like we've ever trained for."

"Loki? He got away?"

She nodded. "I don't supposed you know where."

"I didn't need to know. I didn't need to ask. He's going to make his play soon though." He tells the redhead. "Today."

"We've gotta stop him." Natasha states.

"Yeah? Who's we?"

"Don't know. Whoever is left."

"Well, if I put an arrow in Loki's eye socket, I'd sleep better I suppose."

Natasha smiles. "Now you sound like you."

Clint looks at her. "But you're not." He watches her shift in her place on the stretcher. "You're a spy, not a soldier, but now you want to wade into a war? Why? What did Loki do to you?"

She hesitates.

"Natasha?"

She stares at him with green-eyed sympathy. "I've been compromised. I've got red in my ledger, and I'd like to wipe it out." _For real this time._

A spiky-haired head peeps from the corner, Clint invites him in.

"We've been through some crazy s*** together."

Hunter wordlessly nods.

"And now what're you going to do."

Because of his transformations into monsters, Hunter's eyes have become more reptilian than human. They shrink into the yellow of his irises.

"Same as you." And for a moment, he flashed a fanged grin.

 **The Detention Cell.**

"Was he married?" Steve asks.

"No. There was a…cellist I think." Tony says, trying not to let the pain show in his eyes.

Steve apologizes. "He was a good man."

"He was an idiot." Tony states.

"Why?" Steve asks him, voice free of any hostility. He's seen this before. "For believing."

"For taking on Loki alone."

"He was doing his job." The soldier reasons.

"He was out of his league. He should have waited. He should have…"

Steve tries to comfort the inventor. "Sometimes, there isn't a way out Tony."

The man walks away. "Right, how did that work for him?"

"Is this the first time you've lost a soldier."

Tony turns sharply on Steve. "We are not soldiers." He glares at him before relaxing himself. "I'm not marching to Fury's fife."

"Neither am I. He's got the same blood on his hands that Loki does, but right now we need to put that aside and get things done. Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list-"

"He made it personal." Tony points out.

"That's not the point." Steve argues.

"That is the point." Tony says. "That's Loki's point. He hit us right all where we live. Why?"

"To tear us apart." Steve says. He hasn't taken into account that Tony still hasn't had that privilege yet.

"He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right? That's what he wants. He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience."

"Right." Steve says, catching his drift. "I caught his act in Stuttengard."

"Yeah. That's just a preview, this is opening night. Loki's a full-tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument built in the skies with his name plastered-"

 _Tony Stark. A warm light for all of mankind to share. The only name in clean energy. High power density._ The mix of words come at Tony like a bullet train as he realizes just where Loki's grand debut as Earth's new dictator is about to go off.

When Natasha finds that Steve is ready to walk out in all his star-spangled glory, she takes it upon herself to ask him of his whereabouts.

"Time to go." He states.

"Where?"

"I'll fill you in on the way. Can you fly one of those jets?"

Hawkeye appears, polishing an arrow. "I can." Natasha gives Steve a nod to indicate that Clint is on their side.

"You got a suit?" At that, Clint nods.

"Then suit up." The request was put simply.

The rest of the group, be they below the Helicarrier or within its walls, equipped themselves for what might be the greatest fight of their lives yet. Tony had welded his armor to a point where it could fly him back to Manhattan, Black Widow armed herself with her signature Widow's Bite gauntlets, Hawkeye carefully selects the right arrows and loads his quiver with them, and Steve checks his reflection on his shield. Hunter meanwhile, has used what was left of the laboratory to interface with his PC in Washington, where he unlocks a DNA drone labeled "Alatreon."

As Fury watches them leave, he smiles. Phil's last words before he clocked out were that the team needed something to push them together in the right direction. It was why he had taken Phil's cards out from the agent's locker and gave them to Steve.

The Helicarrier soon tails a flying suit of armor, one of their own aircrafts, and an azure wyvern as they make for Manhattan at godspeed.

Meanwhile, Loki uses Christopher Hunter's own CMS designs, Selvig's brains, and Stark's creation to begin the invasion. In less than an hour, the Chitauri will have conquered the Earth, and he would bring it up again.

As he does so, he catches sight of two familiar figures. The one in the armor of gold and titanium he could not see, but the blue dragon looked at him like a mastiff would see an intruder in its master's grounds. Loki wasn't fazed by the silent threat burning in the creature he had used.

Tony however, had a more…unorthodox means in trying to scare Loki off his shoes.

"Would you like a drink?" He asks the god casually.

Loki looks at the billionaire like he had him all figured out. "Stalling me won't change anything."

Tony corrects the trickster again. "Threatening. No drink you sure? I'm having one."

Loki looks at him. "The Chitauri are coming." He proclaims. "What have I to fear?"

"The Avengers." Tony answers him.

Loki is confused by the name, until the billionaire clears it up by claiming that they are the Earth's mightiest heroes.

"I've met them." Tony smiles at that, and then, unknown to the Midgardian-ignorant deity, discreetly slips on a pair of metal bracelets that do more than bring out his legendary status.

"Takes a while for us to get any traction, but let's do a headcount here. Your brother, a demigod; a super soldier. A man of legend who kinda lives up the legend; a man with breathtaking anger management issues; a pair of master assassins; some kid who seems to be a Noah's Ark for an entire world full of alien animals than make Godzilla look like a pussy and you big fellow," He points at Loki with the hand grasping the drink, "Have managed to piss off every single one of them."

"That was the plan."

"Not a great plan." His voice drops to a warning tone. "When they come-and they will-they'll come for you."

"I have an army." Loki states arrogantly.

"We have a Hulk." Tony states casually.

"I thought the beast had wandered off." Loki says, his blue orbs darting to the balcony, where he notices a human Jake Hunter staring at him, his pupils gone in a pool of sunny gold.

"You're missing the point. There's no throne; there's no version of this where you come out on top. Maybe your army comes and maybe it's too much for us. But in the end it's all on you." Now Tony is face to face with his greatest enemy yet.

"Because if we can't protect the Earth then you can be damn well sure we'll avenge it." He vows.

Loki looks at him, an idea forming in his mind. "How can your friends have time for me, when they're so busy fighting you?" He asks coldly as he prepares to thrust his scepter into Tony's chest.

And nothing. He tries again. Still, only a ping of the arc reactor keeping the man alive and free of mind enslavement to show for it.

"This usually works." Loki says with a hint of disbelief.

"Well, performance issues, it's not uncommon. One out of five really-"

Steve had been the one to threaten Tony with harm if he ever made one more crack, but Loki was the one who finally lost it and flings the inventor onto the hard, tiled floor. He struggles to get up, but Loki lifts him up by the throat as Hunter's skin rattles with the urge to shift form.

"You will all for before me." Loki maintains before he throws Tony out his own windows. It seems like the latter lost, until of course a red pod knocks Loki in the face before chasing the plummeting man, locking on to the bracelets and wrapping themselves around Tony's frame. The Mark VII had saved Tony's life just as he was a few feet from the ground.

"And there's one more person you've pissed off." Tony says as he flies back up to Loki's level. "His name's Phil."

And with that one repulsor strike, the CMS device launches the Tesseract's energy into the sky, creating a massive rift that signals the waiting army hundreds of light years away. With the world of the humans now in their sights, the Chitauri race with bloodlust to win Loki a world and their master a universe.

But they were not met with screams of mercy, but rather, fire of resistance. From a being incased in metal adorned with weaponry they easily fell to, to a creature as blue as the object they crave, firing at them with raw flame.

But one Iron Man armor and one Azure Rathalos, for all their combined firepower, could only do so much against an army that was now pouring onto the streets, forcing citizens to flee for the nearest cover as the city they once called home was now under attack by visitors of the violent kind.

Loki reaches out to the Other's mind. "My time has come."

" _Resistance_." The Other states.

"From a few. They'll pick them off."

" _And the rest_?"

"Mow them down."

The Other revels in the Liesmith's words. It would be fun to watch the humans fall. They were not worthy of seeing their universe fall to his master's knees.

Thor arrives in what seemed like ages, and he grabs Loki and forces him to witness the mayhem he has caused.

"You think this madness will end with your rule?!" He booms.

Loki looks penitent. "It's too late to stop it."

Thor looks at him. "We can. Together."

Loki is about to reconsider, but then stabs Thor in the chest.

"Sentiment." He spat.

In the following duel between brothers, the scepter lies forgotten, and the cavalry has arrived. While the Chitauri were able to down the Quinjet with little but a few blasts, those inside of it were a lot more resilient than expected. The aliens were soon falling at the mercy of an army of no more than seven.

But these were people who knew what it was like to be in the heat of a war, and as for Hunter, he knew that his gift was more than capable of taking them on. An ensemble worthy of Minegarde lore soon comes to beginning as Rathalos shifts into Barioth, slicing into hordes of flying Chitauri craft with steely precision before launching an icy twister that freezes most of the aliens solid. Helplessly petrified, they were the ones at the mercy of Lagiacrus' electric attacks as its eyes, horns, and spinal organs swim with its discharges.

This wasn't just a time of reunions though. As the more human Avengers try to escort civilians out of the line of fire, a boy turns to point at what appears to be the lovechild of a monkfish and a frog with spines all over its body crams several Chitauri into its cavernous maw, its body some regressing back into a normal flat shape and the smile on its face one of genuine satisfaction. It did not bode well on one think about how Gobul gobble up like they do, and at that point, everyone who witnessed the swallowing was struck dumb by the spectacle.

The Avengers could not be part of that audience though. They had other things to worry about. Like the large, biomechanical titan that was now surging through the portal and expelling Chitauri grunts at the buildings. Even with the might of an Asgardian, the Avengers still find that they are barely holding their own.

"What's the story upstairs?" Steve asks Thor.

"The power surrounding the Cube is impenetrable."

"Thor's right, we've got to deal with these guys." Tony says from their comm devices, too busy with a whale-like beast at his heels to discuss matters on the ground. The Chitauri could not shoot the heroes at their most vulnerable because Barroth was being too hard-headed to let them do their job and kill the human resistance, flinging huge chunks of bog water at the aliens.

"How do we do this?" Natasha asks.

"As a team." Steve answers.

"I have unfinished business with Loki." Thor states.

"Yeah, get in line." Clint tells him. From his rear, Great Jaggi drew the aliens into a trap just around the corner.

"Save it." Steve orders the both of them. "Loki's going to keep this fight focused on us and that's what we need. Without him these things could run wild. We've got Stark on top. He's going to need us to-"

A loud motor cut him. It was Bruce, riding on a motorcycle, taking all the carnage.

"So," he spreads his arms out. "This all seems horrible."

Natasha looks at him. "I've seen worse."

Bruce apologizes for nearly trying to kill her.

"No, we could use…a little worse."

"Stark," Steve says, "We got him."

"Banner?" Tony says, his prayers answered.

"Just like you said."

"Then tell him to suit up. I'm bringing the party to you." He says as he appears from around a corner, the serpentine Chitauri chasing after him. No one notices the Qurupeco strutting behind them. As the beast tilts its head, it realizes the size of the monster chasing after Tony and bellows out what could very well be a war cry.

"Doctor Banner," Steve tells Bruce as he begins to walk calmly into the path of destruction, "Now might really be a good time for you to get angry."

"That's my secret Cap." Bruce says as he continues to walk past a flying Iron Man, he then turns to them as Bruce Banner for one final time.

"I'm always angry."

And with that, the Hulk emerges, taking down larger beast in one punch. With Iron Man's missiles and Qurupeco's combustible spit, the thing explodes, its armored plating falling harmlessly onto the roads and sidewalks. Upon witnessing this, the other Chitauri roar out their displeasure as the Avengers assemble down below.

Loki simply looks down at what he deems a futile show of defiance. "Send the rest."

And with that, the true power of the Chitauri floods through the rift.

"Until we can close that portal down our priority is containment."

"Barton, I want you on that roof. Eyes on everything, call out patterns and strays; Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks you turn it back or you turn it to ash."

"Wanna give me a lift." Barton asks.

"Right, better clench up Legolas." Tony says as he lifts Barton onto a high vantage point.

"Hunter, see what you can do about the flying ones." To the super soldier's surprise, the Qurupeco bobs its head in a nod before taking off into the skies. "Thor, you've got to try and bottleneck that portal. Slow them down. You've got the lightning, light the bastards up." With a few cycles of Mjolnir, Thor takes a position at the Empire State Building.

Natasha awaits Steve's orders. "You and me, we stay on the ground, keep the fighting here. And Hulk."

The big guy waits. Steve points to him with only one word.

"Smash."

The Hulk smiles like his birthday had just came, and jumps onto the nearest alien, leaping from building to building, smashing any and all. Yes, that day, the Chitauri learned that the Incredible Hulk was surely the strongest being there is in existence. Any who crossed him that day met a very painful end.

Thor, using Mjolnir's conductive properties, channels its lightning through the building, sending a thunderbolt that created a field that kept too many soldiers from entering. Even the living vessel, known as a Leviathan, explodes from the raw power of that blast.

Qurupeco flies beyond the portal, aiming itself just below a Leviathan before shifting into what appears to be a wyvern with the shielded head of a _Triceratops_. Diablos' weight proves too much for the Leviathan as its back snaps with a resounding crack from the megaton impact caused by the free fall, and while the animal doesn't have breath attacks, the earsplitting roar that followed caused the extraterrestrials to stop dead in their tracks. As the Chitauri have spilled out into a crude line, Hunter turns into a wyvern coated in volcanic ore-Uragaan-and runs the aliens over before pounding onto a congregation using its large chin.

Hawkeye, hits his mark every time before his eyes take heed of Iron Man's unwanted entourage. "Stark, you've got a lot of strays sticking to your tail."

"Just trying to keep them off the streets."

"Well, they can't bank worth a damn." Hawkeye advises. "So find a tight corner."

"I will roger that." A few parking lots later, Tony is off the hook. For now.

"What else you got?"

"Well, Thor's taking a squadron down on 6th."

"And he didn't invite me."

Meanwhile, as Black Widow cuts a Chitauri's throat open and uses its own energy rifle, the battle is starting to take its toll on her.

"Captain, none of this is going to mean a damn thing if we don't close that portal." She says between breaths as they take cover behind what's left of a cab.

"Our biggest guns couldn't touch it." Steve points out.

Natasha looks to the sky, or more specifically, the sky-driven chariots of the enemy.

"Maybe it's not about guns." Steve looks at her, realization dawning on him on her next course of action.

"You wanna get up there, you're gonna need a ride."

"I got a ride. I could use a lift though."

Cap angles his shield as Black Widow takes off in a running start and manages to leap onto the edge of one of the crafts. She breaks the chain that tethers the one manning the turret, and soon leaps onto the pilot, commandeering the craft through his own body. As this happens, Iron Man flies past her, shooting repulsor beams before backing up Cap. On the roof, Hawkeye's marksmanship is still strong as, and Thor and Hulk, the muscle of the team, take down a Leviathan together and make it crash into a history museum.

As they stood there admiring their work, Hulk punches Thor aside, still sore about the hammer incident from before.

Another Leviathan later meets this fate when a huge beaked monster with armor of magma tunnels into its head and out its mouth. Passing chariots were incinerates in a beam of pure volcanic heat. Alternating back and forth between forms, Monster Hunter was a force to be reckoned with as the weapons from the Chitauri bounce off his armor as he singlehandedly takes down countless scores of Leviathans with one monster's power before moving onto the next.

Inside of a bank, several citizens attempting to seek shelter have wandered into a trap. One Chitauri soldier charges up what appears to be a bomb. Captain America, told of their crisis by a keen Hawkeye, heads into the building, bravely taking the full force of the bomb as it knocks him into a car. The military and the police escort the civilians safely. One waitress, who recalls talking to the man behind the uniform, looks at him with surprise and gratitude, her blue eyes feeling nothing but pain for the man who endured so much so that she could keep her life.

"Director Fury, the Council has made a decision."

I recognize the Council has made a decision, but give that it's a stupid-ass decision I've elected to ignore it."

"Director, you're closer than any of our subs. You scramble that jet-"

"That is the island of Manhattan, Councilman. Until I'm certain my team can't hold it. I will not issue a nuclear strike against a civilian population!" Fury said adamantly, his good eye bulging.

"If we don't hold them there, we lose everything."

"I send that bird out, we already have." And with that, the conference has ended. Time to let the experts handle this.

Meanwhile, Loki seizes a chariot for himself. His army's numbers dwindled far too quickly for his comfort.

"Your force lacks…finesse." He manages to get out.

"Our warriors welcome a glorious death with open arms." The Other says with pride.

Loki shakes his head at the sort of beings he was forced to side with in his thirst for power. "That might actually be the problem."

"Lead them." The Other reasons. "You wield the scepter."

Loki then grasps for the staff, only to find that it is not with him. He orders the pilot to turn back, but instead finds that a certain fiery-haired assassin has cut him off.

Well, he will emerge victorious. Why not have a little fun of his own.

He chases Natasha in the air, and the scepter graces him with its length, he grabs an arrow, smirking to no one in particular.

But Clint did not intend to pierce Loki's skull. He wanted to really blow his brains out. Had it not been for that ridiculous head ornament, Hawkeye would have succeeded.

As Natasha lands on the roof, she finds Dr. Selvig, awake to the war happening around him. He looks down to the balcony, where the scepter lies. The failsafe. The main agent of this war, which may also be the Earth's last and truest line of defense.

Loki meanwhile was on the receiving end of the Hulk's anger. Unfazed by the giant's advances, he proclaims himself a king.

"Enough!" He roars loudly enough for the beast to stop in his tracks. "You are all of you beneath me!" The fact that he had been outsmarted and out-muscled was an insult too great to take in silence. "I am a god you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by-"

Loki is grabbed by his feet and swung around like a ragdoll, smashed against the tiled floor with enough to force to create a huge depression of his size. As he lies there in defeat, Hulk leaves him. This one's had enough smashing for a lifetime.

"Puny god."

The fight rages on. Tony has just released the last of his auxillary weapons on the inside of a Chitauri. With only his repulsors, he barely holds on.

Cap and Thor aren't doing too well either. Despite their enhanced physique, they've been fighting non-stop, and Steve was starting to feel the fatigue building up. Thor never thought that he would reach such exhaustion.

"Ready for another bout?" The god asks the soldier.

"What, you're getting sleepy?" Steve jokes.

Hawkeye isn't so lucky, with the last of his arrows gone, he crashes into a building, picking out the broken glass embedded in his arms. Hulk as well has hundreds of energy blasts raining down on him. He roars in fury. Each of the Avengers are worn down to panting slops. Save for one resourceful and conservative hero.

Hunter's body begins to turn a dark black. His forehead split into two savage horns that were a very cruel and torturous parody of Loki's own helmet. With four legs and a pair of wide wings on his back, he roars, and the air and earth become wrapped in the power of an Elder Dragon.

But as quick as he turns, Alatreon is a very volatile monster. A master of elements it may be, but it comes at a terrible cost. Hunter loses himself as the monster suddenly loses the aura around it, felling many of the Chitauri in the process, but this time, he no longer cares if anyone is in the way. With no one at the reigns, the Elder Dragon's savagery may wipe out every living thing in the area. The earth would tremble, only to cease; the seas churn, only to recede; the ground glows with heat, only to fade.

It was a race against time. In three minutes, a missile on course for Manhattan will blow up, and Tony, noticing the open door to space, has an idea.

Natasha however, procures Loki's scepter and is able to pierce the energy barrier. She is only inches from shutting the portal down, however, Tony convinces Steve to stall, but the latter is silent as the billionaire makes the sacrifice play.

"Stark, you know that's a one-way trip."

"Save the rest for the turn J."

"Sir, shall I try Miss Potts? _"_ The AI says, his voice unnaturally grim for a program.

But Pepper, along with the rest of the world, was too engrossed at the live footage to pick up her phone. Meanwhile, the agents onboard the Helicarrier watch with bated breath as Iron Man picks up the nuke. Cheers erupt as the missile disappears within the portal.

The Mark VII model was not designed for deep space travel, but Stark gets it to make the rest of the journey before his system go down, and he plummets uncontrollably into the portal.

The deep darkness suddenly lights up as the mother ship of the Chitauri explodes. Without her, the subordinates drop dead where they stand. Knowing the explosion will reach the Earth if the portal remains open, Steve tells Natasha to close it.

As the portal begins to close in on itself, a suit of armor falls through it at the last minute. Meanwhile, Alatreon manages to grasp a bit of control and shifts into Bnahabra to try and save an unconscious Tony. The suit proves too heavy for the insect to heft though, but for Hulk, it was child's play as he makes a leap of faith, catching the armor in his grasp and using himself to cushion the impact. He wasn't too worried about himself. The tin man was Banner's friend, and Banner was Hulk's friend.

As Thor takes off the faceplate and Steve checks for a pulse, Tony lies, ashen and lifeless on the floor. All seems lost for him until the Hulk decides to give him a very loud wake-up call.

The roar gasps Tony back into the world of the living, and the Avengers all let out sighs of relief. Bnahabra buzzes its wings as it turns back into Jacob Hunter.

"What just happened?" Tony said. "Please tell me nobody kissed me."

Steve laughed. After having nearly, he still has the moxie to humor others. "We did it."

Tony takes in the sweet lack of gunfire and alien vocalizations. "All right yay, hooray, good job guys. Let's just not come in tomorrow, let's just take a day-you've ever tried shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks in from here. I don't know what it is, but I think we should all try it."

Thor looks to the Stark Tower. "We're not done yet."

Tony looks at him. "Then shawarma after."

Up in the tower, Loki's prone form finally moves. He manages to support himself on his knees when a very familiar scepter is pointed at his chest.

He finally puts his hands up in genuine surrender while looking up at the seven people who have crushed his dreams of ruling a pitiful world. "If it's all the same to you, I'll have that drink know."

Hulk merely grunts in annoyance.


	6. The End of a New Beginning

An alien invasion.

The public had confirmed the attack on New York, Manhattan, as a legitimate hostile assault from extraterrestrials, whose traces of the devastation they have wreaked upon the Earth litter what were once majestic skyscrapers, paved roads, and quaint little establishments where one may catch up with a mountain's worth of workload, seek and sort out needs and wants, or just engage in daily banter, be it with a friend or a stranger.

These space beings themselves littered the ground, lifeless and defeated by cause of a combined effort.

The media is bustling with reports pertaining to seven particular people who are the poster children of the resistance force that successfully prevented a full-scale conquering of the planet.

The Avengers.

But that name brought more than just praise. Most were skeptical to the idea of "superheroes in New York" while others tried to instill a less positive picture of these "posers" to the masses. Still others say that while they saved the day, they must still be held accountable for their actions that have caused millions of dollars' worth of collateral damage.

But that is to be expected with any job. You make friends, and sometimes, you make enemies. Not everyone is a fan, but you don't do our job because of the fame and glory that comes with it.

You do it because you have to.

And that is what Director Nick Fury of the Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division assures the World Council of. That the Avengers, for all the danger they can pose individually and as a group, will always fight for the greater good, and for him, it was more than a statement.

"A promise." He says confidently to them.

And even to his subordinates, especially one of his most loyal agents.

"Sir, how does it work now?" A short-haired female agent asked of him as she moves to stand by him in front of a paned view of the sky. Maria Hill never questioned the actions of her superior, but still she finds herself curious as to the fate of the six men and the single woman who had helped them maintain peace all over the world.

"They've gone their separate ways, some pretty far. We get into a situation like this again, what happens then?"

There was sense to that inquiry. Peace is not, and never will be eternal. If it was, people like the Avengers would have never come to fruition.

But Nick Fury is wise to this, and he already had an answer in mind.

"They'll come back." He said, his one good eye looking over to the sunlit horizon as shimmering rays of light glaze the dark complexion of his skin a golden brown. When Agent Hill look to him, she couldn't help but think that there was an energy about him that radiated all his years of experience serving his country, and ultimately, the world. It was one of the reasons why she has so stubbornly supported his ideas, even the ones that seemed ludicrous at a first glance.

But again, her curiosity to the director's mental workings got the better of her.

"You're really sure about that?" She asked him.

"I am." He answered plainly.

"Why?" She asked with just as much simplicity despite the fact that a voice at the back of her head told her that the director's faith was not something that can neither be easily broken or questioned.

"Because we need them to." He replied calmly as the clouds beyond parted for the warmth of the sun as a new day, and a new era, began for planet Earth.

And its mightiest heroes.

Of course, for all his smiling, Nick Fury has only survived thanks to his good eye of judgment. For all its worth, he cannot peer into the future.

He and the rest of those aboard the marvelous skycraft known as the Helicarrier, couldn't have been aware of what lies ahead, beyond the whites of the clouds and the blue of the sky.

 **Washington DC.**

Five months after he'd become an Avenger, there were confirmed eighteen species of non-sentient extraterrestrial life out in the universe, and Monster Hunter was an approved Avenger, with most people, most especially from the pet lovers category, professing their adoration for him by mostly dressing up dogs, cats, lizards, and even snakes in the most creative renditions of wyverns in homage to him.

He won't be able to remove the scars of the murders he's committed as Loki's thrall, but those were memories of the past. He can't let them bring him down. He's already been too close to rock bottom when he realized his friend was responsible for the death of his parents.

Jacob Lioleus Hunter, going by Jake in the public, puts on a brand new azure jacket and a grass green undershirt as he inspects the seven files laid out for him on his study table.

One dossier for each of the Avengers.

As of 2012, they are as follows:

-Anthony Edward Stark (Iron Man)

-Steven Grant Rogers (Captain America)

-Robert Bruce Banner (The Incredible Hulk)

-Thor Odinson

-Natalia Alianovna Romanova (Black Widow)

-Clinton Francis Barton (Hawkeye)

-Jacob Lioleus Hunter (Monster Hunter)

The son of renowned scientist Christopher Kurga Hunter, who created the first interdimensional portal. Many would put the man down once they realized his indirect involvement with the invasion plan, but many more will honor him in the work his son brings to Earth. Hunter's intelligence has allowed him to collaborate on certain projects with Tony and Bruce, and his powers are growing as well.

"Ziggura!" He calls twenty minutes after, and a beautiful red Doberman appears, greeting him with her stump of a tail. "Look what I made you!" He holds up a beautiful silver collar with a thin line of emerald energy running in the middle. The dog crouches and holds her head up so that she may be fitted with it.

"This is so that you can be safe while I'm gone, and that's not all. A family has agreed to adopt you. The best part is that it's on a farm. You'll have plenty of room to run around!" He promises the canine, who looks up at him with melted chocolate eyes.

The doorbell rings, "I hope that's Clint." Hunter says. The archer was the one who recommended to Hunter Ziggura's forever home, and with that he enthusiastically answers to a blonde-haired man with his arm wrapped around a lovely brunette with two children, a boy and a girl, between their legs.

On the table, beside the documents, was a journal that opened to a page listing chapters dedicated to eighteen unsung heroes.

And in the years to come, that list is going to grow.

Because in life, there are hunters, and then, there are Monster Hunters.


End file.
